
 Why This Is What Samsung Is Calling Ice Cream Sandwich - shawndumas
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/18/raphael
======
ootachi
This is one of John Gruber's better insights as of late. Samsung is making the
right move here: sometimes, UI consistency trumps more "daring" moves. Apple's
UI consistency is quite good, especially for iOS (albeit somewhat less so for
Mac OS X, especially with Lion).

~~~
masklinn
And there's of course the second shoe that TouchWiz is a differentiator for
Samsung (as far as they're concerned anyway, users may or may not agree): it's
part of the "value" they provide, and it's (tentatively) part of keeping users
on Samsung phones: Samsung also has TouchWiz skins not just for Android but
for Bada (their in-home OS), for WiMo (Omnia 1 and 2, long dead) and older
smart-ish phones.

So from a business perspective, Samsung considers TouchWiz important for
phones released under the Samsung brand, they're not going to switch to stock
Android UI.

------
jrockway
_[users] would totally freak out if they OK’d an over-the-air software update
that completely changed the entire UI of their phone_

Microsoft does this every year with the XBox 360, and it doesn't seem to have
caused anyone any major problems. Progress is difficult, but that doesn't mean
we should stop progressing.

~~~
MaxGabriel
I suspect that its a different matter of updating for Android phone users, who
may not be tech savvy and have just gotten the phone the AT&T store handed
them, versus the much younger and more technical Xbox 360 demographic. Edit:
And don't see why this wouldn't apply to iOS, too.

~~~
ricardobeat
The average gamer is ~36 years old [citation needed].

~~~
jacalata
That's including PC and web games, and I expect that these sectors skew older
and more casual (implies less technical) than the console market. So the Xbox
demographics are likely to be quite different to the smartphone demographic.

~~~
ricardobeat
Yes, and no. Android is also known to appeal to more technically inclined
people, as opposite to iOS/BB/W7.

<http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp>

------
aristidb
I have another hypothesis: Maybe they don't want to make it so blatantly
obvious that only a small portion of their handsets, excluding even phones
introduced in 2011(1), will actually get the Android 4.0 update. So they might
want to downplay the significance of Android 4.0.

(1) Like the Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which has faster hardware than my Nexus S
with ICS.

~~~
twargoth
You raise an excellent point, thought there's no reason there can't be
multiple rationales here.

------
andybak
Gruber is confusing two things. If someone agreed to a Windows update download
and the entire UI changed then, yes, they would be surprised and rightfully
distressed.

However - if they, asy, upgraded from Windows XP to Vista then they would not
be. They might even be looking forward to a UI overhaul in the name of
'progress'.

Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

~~~
AndrewDucker
Not to most users. Most users have no idea about versions of operating systems
on their phone.

They bought a phone, they _may_ know that it's an Android phone, or they may
just know they bought a Samsung phone. They probably don't even think about it
having an operating system as such - it's a phone, not a computer, as far as
most people are concerned.

~~~
nknight
Actually, people don't even think about the operating system on their computer
much. They're somewhat more conscious of it, but by and large, they buy a
computer and use whatever OS happened to be on it. They'll upgrade their OS
when they buy a new computer.

~~~
bmuon
We've been repeating this line for a line time now, but I'm not completely
sure it applies.

I used to work for a big computer manufacturer from China working on their
website. I worked hand in hand with designers making intranet apps, product
description pages, landing pages, e-commerce, etc. We used to think like that,
that users don't know anything about computers, so we focused on values,
aesthetics, obvious features and price when designing product and landing
pages. But one day a VP of e-commerce dropped by and said that A/B testing was
showing that landing pages with technical data like processor power, RAM, disk
size were working better than bare shiny pages. It turns out users are
becoming more tech savvy every day.

So from that day on, whenever I think "yeah but a common user wouldn't do
that" I try to get some evidence to back it up. People adapt and always
surprise us.

~~~
rsynnott
> But one day a VP of e-commerce dropped by and said that A/B testing was
> showing that landing pages with technical data like processor power, RAM,
> disk size were working better than bare shiny pages. It turns out users are
> becoming more tech savvy every day.

It would have been interesting to do further testing to determine whether a
page with nonsense words that looked technical did as well as tech specs.
There is indeed evidence that consumers _like_ tech specs, and especially they
like _larger_ tech specs; hence the race to increase megapixel counts, even at
the cost of quality, and AMD's "Pentium equivalent" numbers (at a time when
the Athlon 64 did more work per cycle than the P4, AMD would give a number
intended to compare to the P4, rather than the chip's actual frequency).

There is, however, very little evidence that the user has the first clue about
what the numbers _mean_.

------
thought_alarm
This kind of rationalization from Gruber and most other people here would seem
rather silly to anyone who knows a thing or two about how the cell phone
industry actually works.

If a major carrier wanted stock ICS on all their phones, that's exactly what
they would get, and manufacturers like Samsung and LG would trip over
themselves to be the first to make it happen.

Virtually all of the software you see on your phone is there because your
carrier wanted it there. Any software that's missing is missing because your
carrier wanted it removed. It has _nothing_ to do with Samsung; it's not their
decision. Their only goal is to make the carrier happy.

All that prime shelf space that Samsung currently enjoys depends entirely on
meeting the carriers' precise specifications, and that includes all future
software updates. Manufacturers compete with each other for that precious
shelf space, and will do whatever the carrier wants to get it.

~~~
RandallBrown
but samsung, HTC, etc. have to differentiate from each other to sell their
phones to the carrier too.

I think Apple is changing the industry by not taking any more shit from the
carriers. I'm not saying that any other company would be able to successfully
do the same, but I think these custom UI skins are some sort of lame attempt
to do that.

~~~
thought_alarm
That's partially true. But more importantly, when a manufacturer like Samsung
meets with a major carrier to show off their latest line of devices, the
carrier will invariably come back with a list of demands and changes that
they'll need to see before they'll agree to carry the devices.

In order to respond quickly to the carrier's requests, a manufacturer needs
their own custom platform and code base to work from, and that's why each
manufacturer has their own custom Android UI platform to work with. It's a
situation RIM played very well back in 2006/2007/2008, where they not only
controlled the software platform top to bottom, they provided a surprisingly
flexible theme engine to allow each carrier to quickly design their own custom
home screen UI; some quite beautiful (especially from some of the European and
UK carriers), others not so much, but all radically different from one
another.

Apple completely changed the game by creating a device that _average_ users
would gladly dump their carriers for, and that alone takes away most of the
power from the carriers. Today I think Apple, Microsoft, and even RIM are
pushing to change users' expectations about how much control the carrier
should have over their cell phone software. But the old guard manufacturers
like Samsung and LG have been amazingly successful playing the cell phone
industry by the traditional rules, so I think we as consumers still have a
long, long way to go before we'll see any real change from the carriers or old
school phone manufacturers.

------
ot86
According to a new rumour, the upcoming Galaxy S3 will feature two launchers:
Touchwiz and stock ICS.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r1m7a/my_friend_wor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r1m7a/my_friend_works_at_samsung_in_a_respectable/c425z9m)

------
j_baker
I get what Gruber is saying here, but I disagree. Now to be fair, I think the
problem of consistency is real, and I think this is something Android needs to
be better about.

Now, that said, I don't think the solution is to have manufacturers build
proprietary visual interfaces. That's clearly at least as motivated by Samsung
wanting to lock users into their user interface as it is motivated by a desire
for consistency.

Full disclosure: I work for Google, but probably don't have much more to do
with Android than you do. I don't speak for either Android or Google.

~~~
Steko
It's differentiation not lock in. Both Touchwiz and Sense look better for the
many off the street customers.

~~~
j_baker
My brother would disagree with you. He got a Samsung phone and he's stuck with
it for years for the simple fact that it's the only phone he's learned to use
and he doesn't want to learn a new one. If Samsung was running a stock version
of Android, he'd probably be able to switch to any other Android phone.

~~~
Steko
So he hasn't bought a new Samsung phone either, how has this benefited
Samsung?

------
mrhyperpenguin
Sure consistency is great but it doesn't trump everything else. If that were
the case we would still be using Nokia style interfaces from the 90s.

Samsung might benefit from adopting the Android 4.0 UI. If they did, assuming
other vendors do the same, there would be a more unified UI throughout all
Android smartphones, not unlike iOS. And people complain about Android
fragmentation...

~~~
twargoth
Why would a handset manufacturer want the UI on their devices to look like
those on every other? The thinking here is to differentiate as much as
possible - so TouchWiz helps by making the Samsung devices look different than
other models you see in a store. This is the "value add" over stock Android.

------
p1itopre
From the source:

"To be clear, I'm talking specifically about the user interface -- the look
and feel of the platform. Most of the actual ICS features are present in
Samsung's TouchWiz-modified Android 4.0: You will get things like the new
multitasking menu, the revamped lock screen with optional facial recognition,
and the improved system settings."

Doesn't sound like that big a deal.

~~~
mikecane
>>>Doesn't sound like that big a deal.

But you're posting here at HN. For people who have never even heard of this
place, it can be.

------
lukeschlather
Mostly Samsung gets around this issue by never doing OTA updates. (Example
being this Samsung Stratosphere I'm typing on right now.)

------
davepm
most non-casual users (ie geeks like us) would know how to get what we want
(vanilla ICS). I don't see a problem, they are keeping the casual users happy
with no major changes, but know that the tech savy will easily manage to just
install a pure ICS if thats what they want.

------
nextparadigms
Does that mean Windows 8 is doomed to fail?

~~~
brianpan
Windows 8 is not an over-the-air type of automatic update. It's something a
user decides to go to buy and install. This is the type of thing where you
_do_ want it to look at least a little different, otherwise the user will have
the feeling they paid for "nothing".

That's undoubtable one of the reasons that the Snow Leopard price was so low
($29 vs $129), even though I assume it was on the same order in terms of
engineering effort.

------
tbatterii
is it a rule that every time there's something new on daringfireball, it makes
it to hackernews?

~~~
unalone
John Gruber is a well-read author. Many of his readers frequent Hacker News.

There's a reason he's so well-read, too. His comments are frequently
insightful and quickly make sense out of complicated issues. He's been my
favorite online writer for years; sometimes he gets petty or partisan, but
usually his writing is damned good.

~~~
tbatterii
I am familiar with his work. I just thought this particular one didn't have
much substance.

~~~
Steko
It's a linked list item and most of them are short quotes and comments that
encourage the reader to follow the link for more. Usually the DF links posted
to HN are the longer star posts.

------
drivebyacct2
The intro text isn't as clear as it should be. ICS for devices that shipped
with TW and Froyo/Gingerbread looks the same as the OS that shipped with it.
For new devices, it seems and is likely that ICS will look more ICS-y. If you
excuse the acronyms.

