Will Apple continue to optimize OS 3.x for non-3GS iPhones?

[TheSpaz]

I'm not saying this to be mean. But TheSpaz - YOU ARE NOT the definitive voice on the issue. ALL you can say is YOUR EXPERIENCE with 3.0 has been slower on YOUR device.

No one here is PRETENDING our iPhones work flawlessly. That comment I just find absurd. And that comment/attitude is why you get the responses you get. Put your ego in check and just state your experience without having it to be THE FINAL WORD.

Thanks.

I'm telling you. Nathan is lying and trying to defend Apple. I have two iPhones to use 3.0/3.1 on and 3.1 is no better than 3.0 (in terms of performance). I will not accept "mine is working fine". Once you use 3.0 long enough, you forget how smooth 2.2.1 was. Trust me, I just came from 2.2.1 straight to 3.1 beta 2 and let me tell you, it is not like 2.2.1 and it definitely isn't faster.

Why are you defending 3.0 so much?

 

[optophobia]

Well if Nathan is lying then I must be too. I upgraded to the 3.0 software under a developers license and haven't looked back. I had vast speed improvements, better graphics flow etc etc. Now that I have a 3GS its even better. So i guess some people are lucky and some are not OP.
I am glad with what I have.

 

[samcraig]

I'm telling you. Nathan is lying and trying to defend Apple.

Why are you defending 3.0 so much?

I don't give a rat's behind what you're telling me. You have a tremendous ego that is entirely misplaced. Now Nathan is LYING? Oh please. Yes.. you caught him - Nathan is Steve Jobs and clearly he's spreading Apple propaganda

What would make you even WRITE such a thing. Calling him a liar just because his opinion is different than yours. Re-read what I wrote. YOU sounds absolutely looney now.

I'm not defending anything other than the right for each person to express THEIR experiences without saying that others MUST be wrong for them to be right.

Get over yourself. Get over 3.0. Get over it all.

 

[MikePA]

It's too bad the mods don't step in and deal with TheSpaz. Now anyone who doesn't agree with him is lying. What an arrogant, egotistical, immature ba$tard.

 

[TheSpaz]

It's too bad the mods don't step in and deal with TheSpaz. Now anyone who doesn't agree with him is lying. What an arrogant, egotistical, immature ba$tard.

I don't think everyone who doesn't agree with me is lying. Did you read what Nathan said? His list of reasons why 3.0 performs better than 2.2.1 is mostly too good to be true.

I can't understand how his installation is different than mine.

I can see with my own two eyes. I know what I'm looking at and I know what I see. Does Nathan have an iPhone 3G running 2.2.1 and an iPhone running 3.0 as well?

I'm telling you. Most of you just got used to 3.0 and if you switched back to 2.2.1 today, you'd see what you've been missing.

It's too bad. I really hope Apple will be nice enough to do some optimizations for non-3GS owners. You know what I mean?

 

[samcraig]

I don't think everyone who doesn't agree with me is lying. Did you read what Nathan said? His list of reasons why 3.0 performs better than 2.2.1 is mostly too good to be true.

I can't understand how his installation is different than mine.

I can see with my own two eyes. I know what I'm looking at and I know what I see. Does Nathan have an iPhone 3G running 2.2.1 and an iPhone running 3.0 as well?

Again in SIMPLE english. JUST BECAUSE YOU EXPERIENCE SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT THE ONLY VALID OPINION. You don't have to understand HOW his installation is different. Just accept the fact that you have different experiences.

We don't doubt what YOU can see with YOUR eyes on YOUR device. Give other people the SAME COURTESY.

 

[TheSpaz]

Again in SIMPLE english. JUST BECAUSE YOU EXPERIENCE SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT THE ONLY VALID OPINION. You don't have to understand HOW his installation is different. Just accept the fact that you have different experiences.

We don't doubt what YOU can see with YOUR eyes on YOUR device. Give other people the SAME COURTESY.

Perception. In his OPINION his iPhone goes faster. In reality, it doesn't. See what I'm saying here? Yes, we both have different experiences, but one of us is right about what's REALLY happening. Seeing as how I have multiple iPhones, and how I pay too much attention to detail, I have to believe what I'm seeing on both of my iPhones are how all non-3GS iPhones are running 3.0.

My girlfriend has an iPhone that does the same thing, my brother has an iPhone that does the same thing and I think that's enough testing.

I'm sorry, but I'm still calling his bluff.

 

[NathanA]

I'm telling you. Nathan is lying and trying to defend Apple.

HAH! Me, lying in order to try to defend Apple (as if they needed my defence)?

Have you SEEN my MacRumors post history?

Believe-you-me, I have some gripes with Apple, and I have no cause or inherent need to defend them. The LCD issue with the 3GS is beyond ridiculous and I have been personally affected by it, as I made a reference to earlier in this thread I believe. Their locked-in culture and restrictive software ecosystem sickens me. The fact that I HAVE to jailbreak to run the software that I want to run on a piece of hardware that I OWN and paid good money for, and that they are actively working to make it harder to do (if you want to JB a 3GS, you better have a non-defective one in your hot little hands before 3.1 release, etc.) really, really pisses me off.

But they DO have some damn good engineers on their payroll, especially in the software department, and I think that the 3.0 release, TO ME, proves that point.

I'm not an Apple apologist. I've been on the PC scene since the early 90s and only bought my first and only Mac, a Mini, last year. For laptops, I buy and use ThinkPads. I triple-boot XP, OS X, and Linux.

I'm not lying about what I perceive my performance with 3.0 to be on my 3G. But, *shrug*, if you want to believe I am, then it appears that there's really nothing I can do to dissuade you.

-- Nathan

 

[-aggie-]

HAH! Me, lying in order to try to defend Apple (as if they needed my defence)?

Have you SEEN my MacRumors post history?

Believe-you-me, I have some gripes with Apple, and I have no cause or inherent need to defend them. The LCD issue with the 3GS is beyond ridiculous and I have been personally affected by it, as I made a reference to earlier in this thread I believe. Their locked-in culture and restrictive software ecosystem sickens me. The fact that I HAVE to jailbreak to run the software that I want to run on a piece of hardware that I OWN and paid good money for, and that they are actively working to make it harder to do (if you want to JB a 3GS, you better have a non-defective one in your hot little hands before 3.1 release, etc.) really, really pisses me off.

But they DO have some damn good engineers on their payroll, especially in the software department, and I think that the 3.0 release, TO ME, proves that point.

I'm not an Apple apologist. I've been on the PC scene since the early 90s and only bought my first and only Mac, a Mini, last year. For laptops, I buy and use ThinkPads. I triple-boot XP, OS X, and Linux.

I'm not lying about what I perceive my performance with 3.0 to be on my 3G. But, *shrug*, if you want to believe I am, then it appears that there's really nothing I can do to dissuade you.

-- Nathan

I went back and reread the original post from Nathan that started all the lying talk, and I personally agree with him about how OS 3.0 works for the 3G. I don't have backgrounder, so I can't speak to that, but the rest of it is spot on for me. And really, TTYTT, he didn't say anything earth shattering, like the 3G on OS is able to leap tall buildings or anything. It's just responsive and fast, the way it is supposed to be. So, to call him a liar, well, that's just incredible. Oh, and I'm an original Mac user from before most of you guys were probably born, but due to work, have been a PC user for years (before anyone calls me a liar, too).

Much more of this back and forth, and this thread's going to become bunny worthy.

 

[NathanA]

Don't tell me, tell goosnarrggh. He's the one who doesn't know what multi-tasking is.

Hey, Mike, you're coo' and all that, but...come on.

If you want to use the Webster's definition of multi-tasking as some sort of virtual billy-club to browbeat other people with on the forum, then...have a ball, I guess.

It is not uncommon, within the context of the last decade of PCs and PC-like platforms, to use the term "multitasking" as a synonym for "pre-emptive task switching." Within that context, to say that the iPhone won't support (to paraphrase...I should go back and copy-'n-paste from your post but I'm too lazy right now) "multitasking until it has more than 1 CPU in it" is splitting hairs and just asking for a fight.

And based on your responses thus far, you know this all too well. So, please: stop playing dumb/playing the semantics game. You're better than that.

HTH. HAND.

-- Nathan

 

[NathanA]

To respond to a few other things in this thread:

1) To those who wonder if the 3G and 3GS are running the same "core software," I'm willing to wager that they are somewhat different, if only because it would be stupid for Apple to not have built the OS 3.0 source tree using an optimizing compiler for the new ARM Cortex CPU core in the 3GS. Those optimizations would more than likely have included the use of some CPU instructions not available in the old CPU, so the version optimized for the 3GS would not even execute on the older phone models, and thus Apple would actually NEED to have two versions built, unless they wanted the 3GS performance to not be as good as it could be. I would have to imagine that, not counting all the 3GS-specific stuff like video recording and compass app and so on, that the core binaries, including the kernel, would not survive a bit-for-bit comparison.

2) TheSpaz, that screenshot comparison you made between the 3G and 3GS while in Maps is actually rather interesting. I don't know that there is any significance to it, but I get fascinated by trivia like that for whatever reason. I too made some screenshots between my 3G and 3GS to make double-sure that my 3GS LCD issues are in hardware (they are, and I didn't really doubt it, but...can never be too sure), and I took a shot at Maps as well, and can see the same button rendering anomaly in my 3G's 3.0 Maps as your shot shows. Out of curiosity (everybody else here is probably going to hate me for this, but...), which version of Maps does the 2.2.1 Maps resemble more closely: the 3G or 3GS build?

3) TheSpaz (again), although I don't doubt you are a perceptive person (I didn't manage to spot that interesting button rendering anomaly that you did in Maps), I would like to point out for the record that I experienced choppiness in 2.2.1 (which I just accepted for what it was) that, *I feel*, is much less pronounced in 3.0. Perhaps something that I had installed via JB in 2.2.1 was affecting my performance and no longer is now that I'm on 3.0, and that is why I see such a positive change. Dunno. But I do know what choppiness feels like as I experienced it in various places throughout 2.x, and I don't experience that same choppiness anymore, which is why I felt qualified to write the response to your thread that I did.

4) WTF is this whole subthread about multitasking all about? I really don't get it. Do people really just want to argue about stuff so much that we have to invent new things to disagree about? My iPhone 3G-non-S MULTITASKS with Backgrounder, the same way that OS X on a non-multicore or non-symmetric-multiprocessing box MULTITASKS.

kthxbye,

-- Nathan

 

[anjinha]

I'm pretty sure all iPhone 3G's are the same. They all have the same processor, graphics processor and memory. So when I download 3.0 onto my iPhone and chose to not restore to a previous backup, I should have a virgin OS with all default settings. So in theory, my iPhone should run as well as Nathan's but it does not run in the way he is describing. That's what I'm saying. I'm not sure how that can vary from device to device.

Why do some people have certain bugs on their phones and others don't? It's all software, people have different experiences with it. Considering 3.0 is still very new it is very possible (and likely) that some people's experience is less than an optimized experience, just as some people experience certain bugs while others don't.

My 3G runs better on 3.0 than on 2.2.1 FYI.

 

[TheSpaz]

2) TheSpaz, that screenshot comparison you made between the 3G and 3GS while in Maps is actually rather interesting. I don't know that there is any significance to it, but I get fascinated by trivia like that for whatever reason. I too made some screenshots between my 3G and 3GS to make double-sure that my 3GS LCD issues are in hardware (they are, and I didn't really doubt it, but...can never be too sure), and I took a shot at Maps as well, and can see the same button rendering anomaly in my 3G's 3.0 Maps as your shot shows. Out of curiosity (everybody else here is probably going to hate me for this, but...), which version of Maps does the 2.2.1 Maps resemble more closely: the 3G or 3GS build?

The buttons on the 3G are incorrect. One side is slightly distorted and blurry. If you look at the rounded corners on the edge, you can see how they get distorted on the 3G.

If you wanna see what they changed from 2.2.1 to 3.0/3.1, take a look at this:

If you're still interested in visual glitches like this, be sure to check out my thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/724600/

It's a pretty interesting thread. I get a kick out of the people who claim that those visual abnormalities aren't bugs. Also, people try to make fun of me for caring about them.

To answer your question though, the iPhone 3GS firmware is closer to the 2.2.1 look than the iPhone 3G. I definitely think the 3G buttons were made like that in error. I submitted the bug to Apple a while ago though so hopefully they fix it soon.

Edit: A couple more findings:
- https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7954367/
- https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8095089/

 

[NathanA]

Oh, and...

5) Brien, if iPhone OS 4.0 is released concurrently with a "4G" iPhone next year, I'm willing to put money on the table that says it will at LEAST have hardware support all the way back to the 3G, if not the original model. The 3G is currently a still-for-sale device, and probably will continue to be sold alongside the 3GS models as the entry-level Apple phone at the very least until the introduction of a new model, and Apple doesn't have a habit of EOLing software releases on devices that they have only just discontinued (especially since there will be people using the 3G model who will still have between 1 and 2 years of service still left on their AT&T slavery proclamation...err, contract).

-- Nathan

 

[TheSpaz]

Why do some people have certain bugs on their phones and others don't? It's all software, people have different experiences with it. Considering 3.0 is still very new it is very possible (and likely) that some people's experience is less than an optimized experience, just as some people experience certain bugs while others don't.

My 3G runs better on 3.0 than on 2.2.1 FYI.

What I'm saying is simply this. (Note, I am not angry and I'm trying to have a civilized discussion).

When I installed 3.0 on my iPhones... I did some testing. I purposely did not set them up as new phones. I wanted it to be as clean as possible (in case any previous backups where hurting performance) and all my tests came out exactly the same. If 3.0 runs like that on stock firmware, then I'd like to know what people are doing to smoothen things out a bit.

If anyone knows the secret, please share it with us because I'm trying to get 2.2.1 performance back.

A couple of things I noticed though about 3.0.
- Closing application animation is smoother on 3.0/3.1 than 2.2.1
- Opening the bookmarks page is smoother in 3.0/3.1 than 2.2.1

I'm talking about the fluidness of animations if anyone's wondering. 3.0 has been plenty fast for me, but something is hindering it's graphics performance and I don't like it. However, 3.0 doesn't seem physically faster than 2.2.1... seems about the same. It's the graphics that aren't as fluid.

 

[NathanA]

The buttons on the 3G are incorrect. One side is slightly distorted and blurry. If you look at the rounded corners on the edge, you can see how they get distorted on the 3G.

To me, it almost looks like the rendering of the final column of pixels on the edge of that button is being clipped/occluded somehow.

-- Nathan

 

[anjinha]

What I'm saying is simply this. (Note, I am not angry and I'm trying to have a civilized discussion).

When I installed 3.0 on my iPhones... I did some testing. I purposely did not set them up as new phones. I wanted it to be as clean as possible (in case any previous backups where hurting performance) and all my tests came out exactly the same. If 3.0 runs like that on stock firmware, then I'd like to know what people are doing to smoothen things out a bit.

No one knows that.

- When 2.0 came out it was hell for some people but I never had any complaints with it. For me, other than new features, 2.0 was almost as good as 2.2.1. Most people had the opposite experience.
- When I was testing the first 3.0 betas I had bugs that other people didn't with, apparently, the same conditions. Performance some days was great and other days it was really laggy for no apparent reason.

With software things varie and it depends on too many variables for us to know what causes most of it.

 

[NathanA]

A couple of things I noticed though about 3.0.
- Closing application animation is smoother on 3.0/3.1 than 2.2.

Now this gets even more fascinating to me, because that is exactly the opposite experience I've had. Everything else is smoother for me EXCEPT for the closing of apps.

Now, when they DO decide to close readily, it's usually pretty fluid. It's just that so often, the app does not close fast or willingly, and then I either barely see the closing animation or don't even see it at all.

But I also think that maybe the reason why you perceive the fluidity of 3.x app closing to be greater is because I noticed (I think...someone correct me if I'm wrong) that in 1.x/2.x, the picture of the app simply shrunk as the app was being closed, whereas now it is being shrunk AND fading to black over the course of the shrinking process simultaneously, so it's actually a slightly different effect. Pretty sure the fade-to-black bit is new with 3.0.

-- Nathan

 

[samcraig]

Perception. In YOUR OPINION YOUR iPhone goes SLOWER. In reality, it doesn't. See what I'm saying here? Yes, you both have different experiences and both of you one are right about what's REALLY happening.


TheSpaz - I think you are a liar. You have no proof of what you claim, you have no youtube videos of the differences. You have no evidence whatsoever. So I'm calling YOUR bluff.

How's that? See how easy it is to dismiss YOU?!

 

[dccorona]

I see what you're saying. Also, I didn't return the iPhone 3GS *just* because of the crappy build quality. My HDTV broke just after I bought it, so I made the decision to save the $500 and buy a new TV.

I hope Ive caught you before you bought your new TV
buy from bestbuy and get the black tie replacement service (an extra something...not too bad considering what a TV costs, and I don't think its more than an extra $250, probably less than that)
that way, in 3 years, if anything goes wrong AT ALL (dead pixels, broken screen, new software on the TV isnt optomized and makes it laggy, yellow screen tint...) they have to come replace it for you FREE

 

[goosnarrggh]

Don't tell me, tell goosnarrggh. He's the one who doesn't know what multi-tasking is.

No, apparently you don't. Or at least, you are stubbornly choosing to apply an extra qualification to the term "multitasking" that simply isn't part of the generally accepted meaning of the term among computer scientists.

"Multitasking" - either cooperative or preemptive - is a feature that has available on mainstream computer systems since at least the mid to late 1980's, long before multiple CPU systems were mainstream. Multitasking means, quite simply, that multiple applications are on the go at once, and the OS is splitting up its resources (including IO peripherals, RAM, and CPU time) amongst all of them to give the perception that they are all progressing at once. Sometimes a task may yield the CPU to other tasks while it's blocked waiting for an IO task to complete. Other times, the task may cooperatively yield control of the CPU just to be nice. Other times, the OS may force the task out of the CPU to give other tasks a chance to run. All of these meet the definition of multitasking.

This is contrasted with singletasking, in which one foreground application (and only one application) is loaded in the OS at a time, and no other foreground application can even be loaded into the OS at all, let alone do anything, until the first program has finished everything it wants to do, it's terminated, and been unloaded.

The thing you're referring to, where multiple tasks are literally making progress in the CPU simultaneously, can be achieved in some single-CPU systems that are specifically designed for it, such as certain variants of the SPARC architecture, or the Hyperthreading extensions to the x86 architecture. Alternately, it is achieved using multiple cores in a single CPU, or using multiple CPUs; these arrangements are referred to as SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing).

Multiprocessing and multitasking are interrelated, but not interdependent, concepts.

 

[Megalobyte]

The Spaz, you love attention, set yourself up to be derided, then pretend to be offended.

I'm guessing that your self extolled, hyper keen powers of observation aren't only directed towards the iPhone, you likely get obsessed about a lot of things I'm sure. You do this because while you have a massive ego, it's a mask to hide a low self esteem, you obsess about and crave perfection in objects because they give you a false feeling of self worth and control.

I'm being harsh, I realize that, but you bring it on yourself with your egotism, arrogance and sheer rudeness.

You and your ridiculous mental acrobatics don't elicit or deserve sympathy because you're not sincere, rather, you're trying to impress and control, and since there are people who, like you, can perceive things, you get this sort of response. So as was said, please just get over yourself, this forum and it's members aren't here for you alone, you're not nearly as special as you'd like to think, and people are most CERTAINLY free to share an experience that differs from your own without being called a liar, or made to feel dense.

You need to grow up. I'd suggest you look for self worth not in inevitably imperfect objects or by trying to impress or belittle people in a forum, but rather by doing something real and productive with your life, semi-trollng, seeking validation, and attempting to impress others in a forum isn't enough.

 

[TheSpaz]

The Spaz, you love attention, set yourself up to be derided, then pretend to be offended.

I'm guessing that your self extolled, hyper keen powers of observation aren't only directed towards the iPhone, you likely get obsessed about a lot of things I'm sure. You do this because while you have a massive ego, it's a mask to hide a low self esteem, you obsess about and crave perfection in objects because they give you a false feeling of self worth and control.

I'm being harsh, I realize that, but you bring it on yourself with your egotism, arrogance and sheer rudeness.

You and your ridiculous mental acrobatics don't elicit or deserve sympathy because you're not sincere, you're trying to impress and control, and since there are people who like you can perceive things, you get this sort of response, so as was said, get over yourself, this forum and it's members aren't here for you alone, and people are most CERTAINLY free to share an experience that differs from your own without being called a liar, or made to feel stupid. You need to grow up.

I played with 2 more iPhones over the weekend running 3.0 and they were even worse than mine. Performance sucks on 3.0... plain and simple. I just don't need people telling me that their iPhone "runs fine" or "is as fast as ever" because that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Oh, and stop trying to tell me who I am.

Back to my original question. Do you *think* Apple will optimize OS 3 to run as well as 2.2.1 does on the iPhone 3G or do you *think* they'll just concentrate on making the 3GS as good as possible with little effort for the 3G?

2.2.1 is where it's at. It's such a fresh breath of air after using 3.0/3.1 for a little while. It's fast and responsive and the animations are smooth as silk.

 

[samcraig]

Unless we see video of what you're claiming - I'm calling you, TheSpaz, a liar.

How do you like them apples?!

p.s. "I just don't need people telling me that their iPhone "runs fine" or "is as fast as ever" because that just doesn't make any sense to me."

Who cares what YOU need. Selfish, Selfish, Selfish. But reading this thread, no one expects ANY different from you now.

 

[michael31986]

the iphone on 3.0 for me is faster than it was on the last software. i just hate the sms alerts not always going off.