It's not the actual wallpaper. Nor a live one. It's the drop shadows and reflections that cause the issues.
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Steve Jobs on Lack of Custom Wallpapers in iOS 4 for iPhone 3G
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It's not the actual wallpaper. Nor a live one. It's the drop shadows and reflections that cause the issues.
I wish I could disable them
I find home page wallpapers to be a huge distraction. I liked having a photo on my lock screen, but much preferred a black background to the app icons.
I wish I could just disable this new "feature" without using a solid black photo (since I'd lose my lock screen photo).
I find home page wallpapers to be a huge distraction. I liked having a photo on my lock screen, but much preferred a black background to the app icons.
I wish I could just disable this new "feature" without using a solid black photo (since I'd lose my lock screen photo).
8GB iPhone 3GS - $499 you are buying in June 2010 will be limited in hardware once you reach 2012, and who is limiting your hardware?
Apple doesn't wanna do that because it makes it look rubbish. As a company, they'd rather not include the feature than affect their brand.
Good to know. I was curious about this so I started reading some thoughts on this from old jailbreakers and the other thing I heard a lot was that text effects looked pretty terrible as well (in approaches where they weren't disabled entirely). It sounds like what we have here is much more advanced text effects in iOS 4 which calls for much more advanced interaction between layers of transparency with backgrounds.
One might not expect something like this to be a big deal, but it is. It is an issue in web design, for example. Mess around too much with transparency and you're going to start seeing jerkiness and slowdowns on older computers or when associating with older processors. I imagine what happened here is that, due to the new text effects, some jerkiness was introduced when the drop-shadows animated against the background on these devices, and that was enough for ol' perfectionist Steve to toss it out.
The arguments of, "It worked before, so I don't know why Apple screwed this up?" are assuming everything has remained the same—which it hasn't. It's always nice to read a little into these things.
In any case, it will be interesting to see how things run after the inevitable jailbreak and enabling of these features on older iDevices.
Yep: for better or worse, that's how Apple rolls. They'd rather disable a feature on older devices than introduce another tier of hackery to make it work (a big factor here is increasing their exposure to maintaining older devices), and they're unlikely to make sacrifices to user experience. While it may seem out of place at times this attitude is a part of what makes their devices such a pleasure to use.
They're not limiting their hardware. It's the hardware they are offering. It's their 'budget' phone.
The iPhone 3GS 16GB with out a contract was $599 too, but for raw parts costs and the amount Apple paid coxcomb for assembling the phone is around $170-$190. So Apple does get slot of cash from each sale as AT&T pays Apple the full pricewhen you buy one with a contract, and then you pay At&T back by paying your bill.
I can't imagine the iPhone 4 32GB costing more than $200 for parts and foxconn to assemble it. But yes some actual R&D went into iPhone 4. Like the super strong glass and steel band antenna system, high quality display, and A4 chip.
Posts like this make me angry.
Your iPod touch does EXACTLY what it was advertised to do the day you bought it. Hell, I have one too. I don't expect it to keep being upgraded. Anyone that knows anything about computer hardware knows that you can't keep upgraded software without eventually having to upgrade the hardware.
I read a suggestion somewhere else to cover your camera, then take a picture. Voila! Black home screen.
I tried this and just doing a little testing, I think having a black home screen speeds up the animation a bit when opening apps.
Who knows exactly why it doesn't work. An earlier poster makes a good point: for unsupported devices, you didn't have it before, and you still don't have it. Move on...
Yeah, I think that's why iBooks runs slow on an iPhone 3G aswell. New CoreText APIs were brought in iOS4. It seems the older hardware struggles with that.
Set a black image for your home screen background. You can set it separately from the lock screen background.
jW
That kind of practice has been going on for a decade. Look at the iPods. There were many features that were purely software based that were not intensive that Apple could have sold or given to older model owners, but they didn't. Nothing new. Think about the 30 and 60 GB iPods (first ones that could play video), Apple added features like search and FM radio (w/ remote) on the 30 and 80 GB update that could have easily been used on the 30 and 60 GB, but they didn't.
In this case though, it appears the hardware limitations were true. But they could have at least allowed a non shadowed wallpaper somehow.
Of course they do. One of the selling points of the iPhone is that you will get software updates for the next few major releases. Being left out version n+1 is a major reason not to buy an Android phone.
ummm, you're a genius. the comment i was responding to wasn't about what apple couldve done, but a direct comparison between apple's method and a JB method.
yeah, if apple had provided a scaled down version that more closely matched a JB method then maybe it would perform similarly. but they didn't did they?
learn to read
Anyone who thinks this is ******** obviously never did any graphics programming.
The iPhone is an embedded system, embedded systems are very limited. Just because some graphical effect seems "easy" to the user doesn't mean its easy on the system.
Drop shadows, transparency, and the new fade effect on the home screen are quite processor intensive. There is a lot under the hood to do something like that.
Now, that coupled with all of the other things going on in the iPhone under the hood to make it operate like a phone will cause lag on an older system.
The iPhone is an embedded system, embedded systems are very limited. Just because some graphical effect seems "easy" to the user doesn't mean its easy on the system.
Drop shadows, transparency, and the new fade effect on the home screen are quite processor intensive. There is a lot under the hood to do something like that.
Now, that coupled with all of the other things going on in the iPhone under the hood to make it operate like a phone will cause lag on an older system.
If Apple is so concerned with battery life (ie multitasking not included until now) then why are they using dropshadow effects that drain more battery no matter how little.
Apple has to make a profit.
Only way to do that is sell more hardware.
People wont move to the next model if you add most of the cool features to an old model.
I would be upset also if I has a 3g but if you want your phone to have everything, just jailbreak it.
Only way to do that is sell more hardware.
People wont move to the next model if you add most of the cool features to an old model.
I would be upset also if I has a 3g but if you want your phone to have everything, just jailbreak it.
This doesn't explain the idiotic notification system nor their reluctance to allow for custom SMS tones (or hell, to even add some new ones!).
Wait, what?
I have a loaded 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.
Dodge released a 2008 Grand Caravan, and they added satellite TV, multiple DVD players, satellite traffic and NAV, a more powerful _and_ fuel efficient engine, back up camera, power and heated seats, window shades, and swivel-n-go.
At the same time they released a new firmware flash for my 2006 Dodge which improved my transmission shift points, cold weather performance, and engine stability.
When I went in to get my software update, I found out that I wouldn't get the extra fuel economy and horsepower that came with the 2008!
Those bastards at Dodge.
So I went and found a mechanic with a tool that can reprogram my engine mapping. He modified my throttle response, timing, and gave me a couple extra horsepower and a bit more torque lower down. However, the engine now runs louder and clunks a little when shifting under load.
I emailed the CEO of Dodge and he said that the roughness and unreliability of the reprogramming on the engine was not supported by Dodge, and in fact made the 2006 less reliable and unattractive.
What a liar. Why don't I get all the gucci new stuff that came out on the 2008?
I mean, I purchased a product several years ago - isn't it the manufacturers responsibility to make sure it gets upgraded with every new feature that comes out on any new version for as long as I own the product?
--
I have an original iPhone, that is 3 years old. It still works as good as day 1. I even still have a full days worth of heavy use on my battery. I am completely satisfied with the original iPhone, and in fact it would probably work fine for three more years. But I am excited to get a new iPhone 4 for the new features - Apple does not owe me anything. In fact Apple has, over the last three years - enhanced and added features to the original iPhone (now on 3.1.3 software!) that it didn't have when I purchased it...
How spoiled are people to complain about crap like this?
I have a loaded 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.
Dodge released a 2008 Grand Caravan, and they added satellite TV, multiple DVD players, satellite traffic and NAV, a more powerful _and_ fuel efficient engine, back up camera, power and heated seats, window shades, and swivel-n-go.
At the same time they released a new firmware flash for my 2006 Dodge which improved my transmission shift points, cold weather performance, and engine stability.
When I went in to get my software update, I found out that I wouldn't get the extra fuel economy and horsepower that came with the 2008!
Those bastards at Dodge.
So I went and found a mechanic with a tool that can reprogram my engine mapping. He modified my throttle response, timing, and gave me a couple extra horsepower and a bit more torque lower down. However, the engine now runs louder and clunks a little when shifting under load.
I emailed the CEO of Dodge and he said that the roughness and unreliability of the reprogramming on the engine was not supported by Dodge, and in fact made the 2006 less reliable and unattractive.
What a liar. Why don't I get all the gucci new stuff that came out on the 2008?
I mean, I purchased a product several years ago - isn't it the manufacturers responsibility to make sure it gets upgraded with every new feature that comes out on any new version for as long as I own the product?
--
I have an original iPhone, that is 3 years old. It still works as good as day 1. I even still have a full days worth of heavy use on my battery. I am completely satisfied with the original iPhone, and in fact it would probably work fine for three more years. But I am excited to get a new iPhone 4 for the new features - Apple does not owe me anything. In fact Apple has, over the last three years - enhanced and added features to the original iPhone (now on 3.1.3 software!) that it didn't have when I purchased it...
How spoiled are people to complain about crap like this?
I can't get multitasking on my first generation iPod shuffle. Curse you, Steve Jobs! Now my shuffle is useless!
The iPhone 3G has 128 MB of RAM, compared to the 3GS's 256 and the iPhone 4's 512.
There's only so much you can do, for God's sake. Rendering bouncing icons with drop shadows requires it to redraw the background for every single frame. It's — unsurprisingly — a somewhat processor/GPU intensive task.
For anyone who has jailbroken their phone (4.0) for JUST wallpapers (I turned off multi-tasking) he's 100% right.
Go ahead and try it. Your phone is much, much slower with a wallpaper enabled.
Everyone bitches about how "slow their 3g is" yet they want something that will make it slower.
Of course, they could have found a way to make it more efficient if they really wanted to...
+1 I did just that... and the phone is soooo slow and laggy I thought that someone had loaded up a windows os onto it.
I thought it was cool for a few days but it just was not worth it.