“One of the things that really stands out using an iPhone is just how smooth it feels compared to using Android,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac. “Where as Android is laggy, with a measurable interim between when you touch the screen and when the OS responds, iOS almost seems to anticipate what you want to do before your finger touches the display.”
“How has Apple managed this incredible feat? A better question might be: ‘How has Google managed to screw up Android’s multitouch so much?'” Brownlee reports. “According to Andrew Munn — a software engineering student and ex-Google intern — Android is so messed up that Google might never be able to match an iPhone or iPad’s performance. Ouch!”
Brownlee reports, “Here’s Munn explaining what this all means, and why Google was stupid enough to design Android this way: ‘Work on Android started before the release of the iPhone, and at the time Android was designed to be a competitor to the Blackberry. The original Android prototype wasn’t a touch screen device. Android’s rendering trade-offs make sense for a keyboard and trackball device. When the iPhone came out, the Android team rushed to release a competitor product, but unfortunately it was too late to rewrite the UI framework.'”
Brownlee reports, “So why hasn’t Google just changed the UI framework? Well, it’s a daunting task that would involve every app on Android Market to be rewritten to support the new framework. That’s at least a year away, and may never happen.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Opportun” for the heads up.]