Honeycomb is Android’s Vista?

You remember Whist, don't you?

A heavily spattered operating system from MS, following Windows XP. I am sure many of you would like to forget it, I apologize for the reminder. The reason I’m raising this topic again is that you can see a lot of parallels between Vista and Android Honeycomb (3.0). Now in the hands of Google it may well be, there is a “new Vista” - and it will be useful for him to learn from Microsoft how to pass such a test.







According to many criteria, Vista was a huge step forward compared to its predecessor. 5 years in development, it has been released with the new attractive Aero interface, integrated search, improved security, ReadyBoost, SuperFetch, IPv6, Direct3D 10, and other features. By mid-2008, more than 180 million copies were sold .

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Although, compared to sales of XP, this is rather pale (the official XP sales figures are about 400 million copies - note.) The industry sighed with relief when in Windows Vista was replaced by Windows 7. By the beginning of 2011 sales “ Seven "exceeded 300 million copies. Many enterprise customers generally missed Vista and began to switch right away from XP to Win7.

What is wrong with Vista (and Honeycomb)?

So what went wrong with Vista? There were a number of individual problems such as incompatibility with old devices (yeah, since then my home scanner is connected to the machine with linux - approx. Lane), as well as an annoying tendency to ask permission for each action. But I think that the main thing was perception.



In the year of its appearance (2007), Vista was named by PC World magazine as the main disappointment of the year, and InfoWorld ranked second on the list of technical fiasco of all time for Vista. The very mention of Vista scare potential users (you were not asked to put XP on them that year, who bought laptops with Vista preinstalled?). In the well-known experiment, Mojave (well, according to the methodology of the experiment, of course there are questions - approx. Lane), users rated Vista as 4.4 out of 10 for some OS called Mojave (and this was the same Vista, just with a different name) gave 8.5 of ten.



And now let's see the Vin7 ratings. PC World named it the best product of 2009 . And CNET described it as “Whist of which it should have been,” giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Techradar called Windows 7 "the best Windows OS ever released."



For such a turn, the Vin7 estimates would have to be completely rewritten, right? Not. Window 7 is essentially the same Vista with several targeted, incremental improvements, such as a taskbar, translucent windows, and some performance improvements. The system requirements are the same, and the drivers are the same.



If some kind of hardware does not work in Vista, it will not work in Win7 either. But everyone likes Win7. Whist had a bad name, and Win7 had a good reputation.



Recently, I have been watching the slander with regard to Honeycomb (I would say that in much smaller volumes than with Vista - and the scale is smaller and there are enough Android fans, and in RuNet there are more positive reviews than in the rest of the world - comment.) . Jason Perlow called Honeycomb "raw" and "a piece of garbage . " John Paczkowki said about Xoom (the first tablet with a Honeycomb on board) that this is “a bad hack at best” . So is it perception or reality?

Perception or reality?

I use Honeycomb on Xoom everyday. In my opinion, Honeycomb is great, but the Xoom is not so good. The Xoom is too heavy, too expensive, and too unfinished. When people ask me what to buy, I tell them to study alternatives from other companies.

Unfortunately, the shortcomings of the first Honeycomb tablet are a stain on the operating system as a whole.



Honeycomb has a few rough edges, but also a lot for which you can love it. Stacked widgets allow you to flip through documents and movies as in an organizer. Action bars make commands that were previously immersed in the depth of the menu, visible for instant selection. Fragments allow developers to create components that they can reuse, and change their location depending on the orientation of the screen. Alerts are bigger and richer than ever. Mail and calendar are just as good or even better than any that you can find for an iPad. And the browser is great - with tabs and fast rendering without “checkers” as on other devices (in the original - “checkboard fill-in pattern” - there is an approach in which, for example, when scrolling a page, a browser that did not manage to render part of the page shows it a chessboard, which is gradually being replaced by a rendered image, mobile browsers from opera, in particular, liked to do that - lane).



Unfortunately in the Market there is no possibility to filter out applications that were or were not tested on extra large screens. I managed to “hang up” my Xoom three or four times, and I was forced to reboot it (holding the power and volume buttons), apparently due to errors in the device drivers. And although this is unlikely to affect ordinary users, it is worth saying that the emulator used by developers is terribly slow (yeah, yeah, I confirm - approx. Lane) because of all this 3d graphics on which the UI Honeycomb is built.



And the way forward for Google and Android is obvious. Do not worry about criticism and protect Honeycomb, but release the next version (“IceCream”).

Creme brulee to help

What Windows 7 did for Vista, IceCream will do for HoneyComb. IceCream is essentially the same Honeycomb with several targeted, incremental improvements. It will work on the same hardware as HoneyComb (plus ported to phones). And it will seem more “licked” ... well, because it will take more time to polish it.



Google keeps Honeycomb sources from publishing because they are not yet ready for a wide audience. IceCream will be open. This means more ports, more custom firmware, more error messages, more bug fixes, etc.



I predict that reviewers who curse Honeycomb will love IceCream. In the end, HoneyComb will dissolve in history, just like Vista.