Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones
by NickPollard on Friday August 27, 2010 @05:11AM
(#1638332)
>> We've passed the point where every bit of performance matters.
We really haven't. In a twitter client? Sure. In a real-time game? Hell no.
Don't assume that all software is the same, or that it will never change (See Bill Gates's famous '640k is enough memory for anyone' comment).
A machine with a 1Ghz processor, a half a gig of RAM, dedicated video processing hardware, dedicated audio compression hardware (the GSM modem, etc.), and so on is "constrainted".
The premise of the article is that's impossible to achieve reasonable performance on a mobile device while using a virtual machine. This is obviously false, as Android performs wonderfully on my phone. A call comes in, the "slide to accept" action works smoothly. I visit a web page, it loads as fast as the network can give it to me.
Apple's OS may be more responsive, but I'm not really sure about that. The browser feels the same. Maps feels the same. Receiving a call feels the same.
We've passed the point where every bit of performance matters. Now, it's about features -- let me know when I can use irc over ssh on the iPhone or use Google Voice to make calls from the native Dialer application. "Slow" VM or not, my Android phone can do that stuff, but the iPhone can't.