Apple invites iPhone developers to test live Push Notifications

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 67
    ajmasajmas Posts: 596member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    QotD: We've seen Apple's vendor controlled and run App Store being copied* by Google and RiM, should we also expect that Push Notification servers will be copied as well, even if other vendors allow for bona fide** background apps***?



    Background apps can be achieved by jailbreak, but to put backgrounding issues into perspective:



    - People have ranted and raved about 'poor' battery life on the iPod and any other devices Apple realeases, eveven when an iPod can get three days worth of charge.

    - Everyone says smartphone 'x' allows for background tasks. Sure, but how long do you go between charges and what is running in the background? I want figures and data.

    - My experience with some smart phone is a difference between two days charge and 4 hours, when applications are backgrounding.

    - How big should the battery be before people start complaining the iPhone is too fat?

    - Dedicated hand-held GPSs only get a day on charge, and this is the main task, so if this is in the background of a phone, this will hurt.



    I am sure Apple will allow background applications at some point in time, but if allowing means 4 hour charge times, even more complaints about battery times, then I am sure Apple will resist techs that insist on background applications.
  • Reply 22 of 67
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ajmas View Post


    Background apps can be achieved by jailbreak, but to put backgrounding issues into perspective:



    - People have ranted and raved about 'poor' battery life on the iPod and any other devices Apple realeases, eveven when an iPod can get three days worth of charge.

    - Everyone says smartphone 'x' allows for background tasks. Sure, but how long do you go between charges and what is running in the background? I want figures and data.

    - My experience with some smart phone is a difference between two days charge and 4 hours, when applications are backgrounding.

    - How big should the battery be before people start complaining the iPhone is too fat?

    - Dedicated hand-held GPSs only get a day on charge, and this is the main task, so if this is in the background of a phone, this will hurt.



    I am sure Apple will allow background applications at some point in time, but if allowing means 4 hour charge times, even more complaints about battery times, then I am sure Apple will resist techs that insist on background applications.



    There are also some logistical issues involved for a company like Apple.



    — If they do allow normal background apps, and not just locally cached webpages like the Palm Pre, how many do they allow at once?

    — What if you get to your limit and wish to turn another on do you get another app that comes up to let you kill one of the other apps (ala Task Manager)?

    — Do they make it a set number of background app or does it adjust that number based on the requirements of the apps themselves after they are running?

    — Do you get to set with apps are notification or background capable?

    — Does Apple and/or the developer get to choose which apps or parts of apps are background capable?

    — Will we get an Activity Monitor app so the average person can see which apps are hogging the CPU cycles, RAM and sucking the battery?



    That is the logistical aspect and I think it's all too much for Apple to put in the typical techtarded consumer's hands for a very long time, if ever.



    PS: I think if Sprint is training people on the Pre now that it will be released as previously rumored on April 30th. I look forward to seeing how well it runs with their multipaging WebKit browser and how long the battery lasts. I'd like to see Palm not only survive, but thrive, with this new device. I think if the Pre doesn't work for them I am not sure they will ever have another chance.
  • Reply 23 of 67
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    As you say, the consumer is often brain dead. I can see them loading up on 20 or 30 free location, and other apps, that insist on running in the background, and everything grinding to a halt.



    When people compare older phones with the iPhone, and say that it works just fine (not from what I've seen all too often), it's mainly because there is a select number of consumers who are buying these phones, and a relatively small number of apps that do this.



    The iPhone customer base is, at least at this point of time, much more broadly based. I really don't think a lot of them will have the willpower to resist Apple's wonderful iPhone ads that promote apps. And we know that once this thing becomes possible, Apple will promote that as well, just like they will do about notifications this summer.



    It's one thing to have two or three, maybe even four or five apps in the background, but what happens when there are that 20 or 30?



    The phone will need much more app RAM, and as this article correctly points out already, a much better processor:



    http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/app...partner=alerts
  • Reply 24 of 67
    ajmasajmas Posts: 596member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    It's one thing to have two or three, maybe even four or five apps in the background, but what happens when there are that 20 or 30?



    The phone will need much more app RAM, and as this article correctly points out already, a much better processor:



    And the battery proving to be a limiting factor.
  • Reply 25 of 67
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ajmas View Post


    And the battery proving to be a limiting factor.



    That too.



    There will also be a crapload of contention going on. How do you allocate processor cycles between 20 to 30 programs? Especially when there aren't that many processor cycles to begin with?
  • Reply 26 of 67
    arsanarsan Posts: 3member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    So given all that, let me ask you a question that I've asked before, in a different context:



    Why do you think Apple is approaching this the way they are?



    Is it because they are lazy? Incompetent? Stupid? Is that that they inexplicably want the iPhone to be less competitive? They hate their customers? Steve Jobs is insane?



    According to you, the barriers to multitasking are trivial. All their competitors can do it, kids in their basement with jail-broken phones can do it, and Apple's "excuses" are all laughable. It's not really about CPU heft or battery life or complexity. They're lying.



    Why? Apple seems to have done pretty well with the iPhone, to date, so they can't be complete idiots/hellspawn/crazy. In fact, failure to implement such a vital feature, which is so simple to do, would be seem to be a genuinely bizarre lapse, given Apple's track record here.



    Can you maybe clarify what you think Apple's motives are, for failing to deliver a wonderful feature that would require almost no effort, have no down side, and massively enhance the iPhone's desirability?



    The question "Why" is a good one, I think one can only guess. One can further extend the series of WHY questions:



    - when people were crying for third party apps on the iphone platform, WHY did Steve Jobs insist on having a half baked (you can use the same duct tape metaphor here if you like) web applications instead of native applications?



    - when people did the jailbreaking, why did Apple finally give up its grip (a little bit) and created an app store with native third party apps with a severely limited SDK?



    - Why is there no real Gmail app like the one found in BlackBerry for example, almost any other phone has a specific gmail app?



    - Why would the skype app not take benefit of the 3G even though Skype executives are publicly saying that there is nothing wrong with the app and it would work perfectly on 3G? (and it does, just this morning I was on it for 15 minutes with my dad overseas)



    - Why is Iphone available only through AT&T?



    - Why is there no MMS?



    - Why can't you have horizontal keyboard (3.0 will do this it seems)



    - Why no video recording?



    - Why initially support DRM and now we are DRM-Free? Why are videos still with DRM? Why is the rental only 24 hours but not 48 or 72 making Apple TV useless in my opinion?



    Most people would consider the iphone a platform that is very attractive for mobile computing. The gateway to this platform is currently controlled by Apple through the SDK and App Store process. It is a business decision to have this control in place. When iphone first came out, the control was absolute, only Apple could provide applications, then the grass roots efforts became so loud that Apple had to relent and open up App Store. Now there is similar grumbling against the decision of not allowing background applications and against draconian artificial controls, and this grumbling will eventually force Apple to re-consider their current policies, piece by piece, just like they did since the launch of this platform.



    I do feel that Steve Jobs has a great vision and the talent to monetize innovation. It is only natural to try to control the revenue stream whether it is by protecting your strategic alliances (don't allow tethering, don't allow Skype on 3G for the sake of AT&T's phone minute revenues).



    Sometimes, our (consumers) interests and the interests of the corporations that provide us these innovative products and services may not be perfectly aligned, thus it is quite natural to see friction. We had friction since the launch of the iphone platform and this friction is the reason the platform got better and better which each iteration and I welcome it.



    Companies need to maximize their revenues, and we consumers also want maximum satisfaction from the products we buy. It is in my interest to have as many features as possible on my iphone, such as background apps, skype, horizontal keyboard, MMS, video recording, etc. As a single user, I can only have a tiny voice in nudging the corporation to what I believe the direction of the product's development should take. The biggest testament of this relationship can be seen by simply looking at the near past and the interaction between the customers and the corporation. Now Apple no longer bricks iphones. Now you don't have to go to the store to activate an iphone, soon you will get "notifications" and soon after everybody hates it, you will get true background processing, because those notifications are simply not good enough.



    I guess the answer to "why" is complex, but I certainly don't believe the team at Apple is lazy or malicious. They are just trying to make sure they get the maximum benefit for Apple and by constructively discussing these issues, we are also contributing to this innovation and helping out the company deliver products that we really want and enjoy.



    Sorry, I could not deliver a straight forward answer to your "why" question...



    Thanks.
  • Reply 27 of 67
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Of course, another way to look at all of that is to assume that Apple, upon introducing a new platform that they expected to make use of for many years to come and to provide a vital offering in the emergent hand held, ubiquitously connected computing market, was very conservative in what they rolled out and when-- preferring to get the basics right before they started adding extras.



    The question you didn't ask is how any of those things helped Apple make more money. How does "withholding" MMS improve Apple's bottom line? How does "refusing" to put video recording on the original iPhone play into some kind of scheme?



    AT&T exclusivity has been exhaustively discussed, no mystery at all: AT&T was willing to give Apple the terms they wanted, which were a radical departure from the carrier-centric model that had been in place until Apple changed it. It's one of the reasons the iPhone was a breath of fresh air in the industry, and if others have moved some ways to copy the model, that doesn't mean that Apple didn't make the right move to get the deal they did when they got it.



    And, dude-- the idea that the SDK and app store were in response to jailbreakers is overripe internet hubris at its finest.



    Sure, they may be some features that Apple didn't think important which popular clamor has caused them to reevaluate. MMS comes to mind, although not much else.



    But so what? What point does that make? That Apple sometimes misjudges the market and sometimes corrects for that, assuming it isn't part of some larger core beliefs about the kind of things they want to build.



    And? You have to be some kind of "fan boy" to reject, out of hand, some feverish notion that Apple's "arrogance" had been spanked by internet cry babies, or that because the iPhone doesn't have every feature every dreary tech boy demands it in any way indicates some weird Apple control thing that somehow hoards money that would have otherwise..... what?



    They made the phone they wanted with the features they thought most important for the market they intended to sell it in. They have subsequently and steadily improved on that, just like we would have expected them to. The pattern of improvement shows clear evidence that they are feeling their way, making sure that an additions will work over the long haul, and work well.



    The fact that more features appear over time doesn't "vindicate" the people that wanted those features in the first place, any more than any enhancements to anything vindicate anyone, ever.



    Honestly, it's just a sort of insane argument to make, as it is predicated on the fairly insane idea that Apple made a crippled phone on purpose, because somehow that played into their hands, and has only been forced to rectify that, if only in part, by "the people" carrying on on the internet.



    Occam's razor-wise, it seems a lot easier to believe that Apple intended to improve the iPhone all along, doesn't it? You know, because that's what happened to every device in the history of man.
  • Reply 28 of 67
    I was sold on push as soon as I heard the ESPN "da, da, da; da, da, da" in the release video! I can't iwait!!!
  • Reply 29 of 67
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by arsan View Post


    The question "Why" is a good one, I think one can only guess. One can further extend the series of WHY questions:



    - when people were crying for third party apps on the iphone platform, WHY did Steve Jobs insist on having a half baked (you can use the same duct tape metaphor here if you like) web applications instead of native applications?



    - when people did the jailbreaking, why did Apple finally give up its grip (a little bit) and created an app store with native third party apps with a severely limited SDK?



    - Why is there no real Gmail app like the one found in BlackBerry for example, almost any other phone has a specific gmail app?



    - Why would the skype app not take benefit of the 3G even though Skype executives are publicly saying that there is nothing wrong with the app and it would work perfectly on 3G? (and it does, just this morning I was on it for 15 minutes with my dad overseas)



    - Why is Iphone available only through AT&T?



    - Why is there no MMS?



    - Why can't you have horizontal keyboard (3.0 will do this it seems)



    - Why no video recording?



    - Why initially support DRM and now we are DRM-Free? Why are videos still with DRM? Why is the rental only 24 hours but not 48 or 72 making Apple TV useless in my opinion?



    Most people would consider the iphone a platform that is very attractive for mobile computing. The gateway to this platform is currently controlled by Apple through the SDK and App Store process. It is a business decision to have this control in place. When iphone first came out, the control was absolute, only Apple could provide applications, then the grass roots efforts became so loud that Apple had to relent and open up App Store. Now there is similar grumbling against the decision of not allowing background applications and against draconian artificial controls, and this grumbling will eventually force Apple to re-consider their current policies, piece by piece, just like they did since the launch of this platform.



    I do feel that Steve Jobs has a great vision and the talent to monetize innovation. It is only natural to try to control the revenue stream whether it is by protecting your strategic alliances (don't allow tethering, don't allow Skype on 3G for the sake of AT&T's phone minute revenues).



    Sometimes, our (consumers) interests and the interests of the corporations that provide us these innovative products and services may not be perfectly aligned, thus it is quite natural to see friction. We had friction since the launch of the iphone platform and this friction is the reason the platform got better and better which each iteration and I welcome it.



    Companies need to maximize their revenues, and we consumers also want maximum satisfaction from the products we buy. It is in my interest to have as many features as possible on my iphone, such as background apps, skype, horizontal keyboard, MMS, video recording, etc. As a single user, I can only have a tiny voice in nudging the corporation to what I believe the direction of the product's development should take. The biggest testament of this relationship can be seen by simply looking at the near past and the interaction between the customers and the corporation. Now Apple no longer bricks iphones. Now you don't have to go to the store to activate an iphone, soon you will get "notifications" and soon after everybody hates it, you will get true background processing, because those notifications are simply not good enough.



    I guess the answer to "why" is complex, but I certainly don't believe the team at Apple is lazy or malicious. They are just trying to make sure they get the maximum benefit for Apple and by constructively discussing these issues, we are also contributing to this innovation and helping out the company deliver products that we really want and enjoy.



    Sorry, I could not deliver a straight forward answer to your "why" question...



    Thanks.



    A lot of the questions you're putting out here have pretty obvious answers. Answers which you should know.



    A number of those questions can be answered by the word "contract".



    I'm sure you know that.



    The answer to Why AT&T you should know as well.



    Because Verizon apparently responded poorly to Apple requirements. Verizon has always been known as the most tightly tied down network. It's only been after the success of the iPhone, and the ripping away of some of Verizon's most profitable customers that they changed their rules.



    It's likely they were so smug about it that they didn't want to negotiate payment either.



    The last reason is CDMA. It's possible that Apple was interested in building a CDMA phone because of Verizon's position in the market at the time, but the other areas of disagreement actually led to the iPhone very possibly becoming more successful than it would have been on Verizon.



    You have NO idea that jailbreaking had anything to do with the app store. From the very beginning, as I said at the time, Jobs said that there would eventually be a way to get third party apps on the iPhone, and I don't believe he meant the web apps that came first.



    Why is Gmail a real" mail app, and Apple's much better mail app not a "real" mail app? That makes no sense at all, even if you do like Gmail, which I don't.



    We have seen the truly crappy video recording done by jailbroken apps. That's a pretty obvious reason why the iPhone hasn't had it.



    DRM. You do understand that DRM is required by the content companies, and that it took a good deal of negotiating, and concessions on Apple's part, to eliminate it for music and music videos?



    Why don't you ask every other company why they have video DRM?



    You have a lot of this backwards.
  • Reply 30 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    How do you allocate processor cycles between 20 to 30 programs? Especially when there aren't that many processor cycles to begin with?



    There might have been 620 millions of clock cycles available each second. OK, the battery (or Infineon chip?) helps itself to nearly 200 millions per second. The video playback is proven to be of decent quality with 440 millions of clock tics per second.

    Let Apple send Infineon to hell and give 200 MHz to 19 more apps in background. 10 MHz to each app, not that bad, I dare say. Macintosh is said to have been capable of offering less.



  • Reply 31 of 67
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01 View Post


    There might have been 620 millions of clock cycles available each second. OK, the battery (or Infineon chip?) helps itself to nearly 200 millions per second. The video playback is proven to be of decent quality with 440 millions of clock tics per second.

    Let Apple send Infineon to hell and give 200 MHz to 19 more apps in background. 10 MHz to each app, not that bad, I dare say. Macintosh is said to have been capable of offering less.







    That's not a lot of cycles.



    So, sure, it looks like a big number, but all numbers are big when it comes to computers. Compared to a typical desktop, those numbers are small indeed.



    As I said, not many cycles.



    The old Macs didn't multitask. When the later ones did, just like PC's that began to do it as well, they bogged down.



    The truth is that most of the programs used back then were much smaller, and much less complex, than the programs on the iPhone now.



    It really took two cpu's or cores, before multitasking became useful.
  • Reply 32 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    That's not a lot of cycles.



    So, sure, it looks like a big number, but all numbers are big when it comes to computers. Compared to a typical desktop, those numbers are small indeed.



    As I said, not many cycles.



    The old Macs didn't multitask. When the later ones did, just like PC's that began to do it as well, they bogged down.



    The truth is that most of the programs used back then were much smaller, and much less complex, than the programs on the iPhone now.



    It really took two cpu's or cores, before multitasking became useful.



    I was kidding, surely. This is why I'm not gonna enter in arguments. Processor speed, however, isn't key limitation, when it comes to multitasking. It never was. Just recall, <200 MHz desktop computers did multitasking 15 years ago by no means worse, than modern multiprocessor machines.
  • Reply 33 of 67
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01 View Post


    I was kidding, surely. This is why I'm not gonna enter in arguments. Processor speed, however, isn't key limitation, when it comes to multitasking. It never was. Just recall, <200 MHz desktop computers did multitasking 15 years ago by no means worse, than modern multiprocessor machines.



    I disagree with you on this. I used those "multitasking" machines. Unless you were using programs that did nothing most of the time, they could just stop, dead.



    Try to use two programs that actually needed the cpu, and you couldn't get anything done. The computers were too weak.



    So sure, you could word process, because that only used 10% of the computers cycles unless you were scrolling down a large document, when the computer, even then, was too slow. If you're old enough, you might remember that.



    Try to do that while a large spreadsheet was recalculating, and it would take twice as long to finish.



    Heaven help you if you tried to do two things that needed some speed.



    In fact, today's multi-core machines are best used for multitasking.



    But, even now, with my dual 2.66 Mac Pro, if I try to render a movie in FCS, and work on a large Photoshop file, the computer bogs down.
  • Reply 34 of 67
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01 View Post


    Just recall, <200 MHz desktop computers did multitasking 15 years ago by no means worse, than modern multiprocessor machines.



    They also weren't running modern programs which are used to demanding more from processors. Then consider that the iPhone is already using a good portion of it's available resources for other functions before you even get to 3rd-party apps.
  • Reply 35 of 67
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01 View Post


    I was kidding, surely. This is why I'm not gonna enter in arguments. Processor speed, however, isn't key limitation, when it comes to multitasking. It never was. Just recall, <200 MHz desktop computers did multitasking 15 years ago by no means worse, than modern multiprocessor machines.



    The iPhone is running OS X (effectively Unix). And Unix *is* multi-tasking in its boots. The iPhone has always been multi-tasking - and at any one time is running a bunch of tasks.



    What the iPhone is not doing is allowing multiple 3rd party applications to run simultaneously.



    On a portable device with a single screen, there is limited benefit to running two applications at once. Only one can interact with the user at a time. Unlike a desktop we can't open two windows at once. The benefit to multi-application running is small.



    There are however a lot of dis-benefits to multiple applications. If an application is great, is reasonable that each application gets the lion's share of memory, and cpu performance.



    If one application demands 90% of the device's resources. Then two apps will never play nicely together. If an application had to work with only a 1/5 of memory and a 1/4 of the CPU, it would dramatically weaken the experience of the device.



    App switching rather than sharing is a better compromise. We don't want apps in the background draining battery, consuming resources. We do want to swiftly and seamlessly shift between one program and another.



    The one app at a time rule is a good one, but what do we lose?



    Audio is one. A player sits in background and continues to play audio while we do something else. Apple has made a special-case whereby the iPod app does just this. This meets most requirements but not when the audio is streaming from an application like Pandora.



    Is this a deal killer for the phone buying public. Nah. It's minor.



    The second case is having an app in the background doing something trivial, waiting for an external condition. A new email, a new message - etc. Again, the SMS app and the Email work in the background anyway.



    The new push notification system solves the problem for third party apps, without having the requirement for the app to stay resident in memory.



    These are sensible, well thought-out engineering compromises. They offer most of the benefits of multi-tasking apps with few of the disbenefits. The beneficiary is the consumer. And while people say "Wahh - I wanna browse the web, while listening to LastFM" - A lot more people would whine if the price of that change was a reduction in performance.



    But I don't think this process is over. There Apple can continue to improve the device.



    A better application notification system would be cool. A home-screen with twitter like scrolling list of notifications would be useful. Especially if we have lots of Apps delivering many push notifications.



    I think the objection to app-switching would be much less if the app-switching was instant.

    A five second delay between one app and the next is too long. So I would welcome Apple working on reducing that delay to zero. If the most recent shut-down apps could archive themselves into an reserved area of flash memory, an ultra-fast relaunch might be possible.



    It would be trivial for Apple to allow multiple apps. But such a change would make the device worse and not better.



    C.
  • Reply 36 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    I disagree with you on this. I used those "multitasking" machines. Unless you were using programs that did nothing most of the time, they could just stop, dead.



    Try to use two programs that actually needed the cpu, and you couldn't get anything done. The computers were too weak.



    So sure, you could word process, because that only used 10% of the computers cycles unless you were scrolling down a large document, when the computer, even then, was too slow. If you're old enough, you might remember that.



    Try to do that while a large spreadsheet was recalculating, and it would take twice as long to finish.



    Heaven help you if you tried to do two things that needed some speed.



    In fact, today's multi-core machines are best used for multitasking.



    But, even now, with my dual 2.66 Mac Pro, if I try to render a movie in FCS, and work on a large Photoshop file, the computer bogs down.



    I am 41, if you wanna know. And I was old enough to have used those machines professionally. They rendered 3D models and played mp3 music simultaneously. Received and sent packets over LAN and dispatched all these activities at the same time. I'd say 50% of lemmings would be happy to have only that on iPhone.



    What we had yet to see were streaming even audio and video. And yes it's video that requires all those clock cycles now.
  • Reply 37 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    They also weren't running modern programs which are used to demanding more from processors. Then consider that the iPhone is already using a good portion of it's available resources for other functions before you even get to 3rd-party apps.



    True. I'd just make small remark, not every demanding software makes sense to be run in background. Playing video in background, hein?
  • Reply 38 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Carniphage View Post


    The iPhone is running OS X (effectively Unix). And Unix *is* multi-tasking in its boots. The iPhone has always been multi-tasking - and at any one time is running a bunch of tasks.



    What the iPhone is not doing is allowing multiple 3rd party applications to run simultaneously.



    On a portable device with a single screen, there is limited benefit to running two applications at once. Only one can interact with the user at a time. Unlike a desktop we can't open two windows at once. The benefit to multi-application running is small.



    There are however a lot of dis-benefits to multiple applications. If an application is great, is reasonable that each application gets the lion's share of memory, and cpu performance.



    If one application demands 90% of the device's resources. Then two apps will never play nicely together. If an application had to work with only a 1/5 of memory and a 1/4 of the CPU, it would dramatically weaken the experience of the device.



    App switching rather than sharing is a better compromise. We don't want apps in the background draining battery, consuming resources. We do want to swiftly and seamlessly shift between one program and another.



    The one app at a time rule is a good one, but what do we lose?



    Audio is one. A player sits in background and continues to play audio while we do something else. Apple has made a special-case whereby the iPod app does just this. This meets most requirements but not when the audio is streaming from an application like Pandora.



    Is this a deal killer for the phone buying public. Nah. It's minor.



    The second case is having an app in the background doing something trivial, waiting for an external condition. A new email, a new message - etc. Again, the SMS app and the Email work in the background anyway.



    The new push notification system solves the problem for third party apps, without having the requirement for the app to stay resident in memory.



    These are sensible, well thought-out engineering compromises. They offer most of the benefits of multi-tasking apps with few of the disbenefits. The beneficiary is the consumer. And while people say "Wahh - I wanna browse the web, while listening to LastFM" - A lot more people would whine if the price of that change was a reduction in performance.



    But I don't think this process is over. There Apple can continue to improve the device.



    A better application notification system would be cool. A home-screen with twitter like scrolling list of notifications would be useful. Especially if we have lots of Apps delivering many push notifications.



    I think the objection to app-switching would be much less if the app-switching was instant.

    A five second delay between one app and the next is too long. So I would welcome Apple working on reducing that delay to zero. If the most recent shut-down apps could archive themselves into an reserved area of flash memory, an ultra-fast relaunch might be possible.



    It would be trivial for Apple to allow multiple apps. But such a change would make the device worse and not better.



    C.



    Ough... Seconded.



    I'd sum up the barriers to wide introduction of multitasking on mobile platforms as
    • is all below worth rushing into?

    • power management issues;

    • UI issues, including design, that isn't least problem in the case;

    • dispatching issues and memory issues; it's more complex, than on desktop platforms;

    • ...

    • ... ...

    • ... ... ...

    • processor speed issues...

  • Reply 39 of 67
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01 View Post


    I am 41, if you wanna know. And I was old enough to have used those machines professionally. They rendered 3D models and played mp3 music simultaneously. Received and sent packets over LAN and dispatched all these activities at the same time. I'd say 50% of lemmings would be happy to have only that on iPhone.

    image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...t_and_rear.jpg

    image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Indigo2.jpeg

    What we had yet to see were streaming even audio and video. And yes it's video that requires all those clock cycles now.



    There is a major difference regardless of multi-tasking abilities, and that is power access. The machines you posted zre obviously plugged in. A cellphone needs to consider the longevity of the phone first and foremost.



    I don't think that Apple is against having 3rd-party apps run in the background but they do have to be careful how they do it. They've only had 3rd-party apps on the iphone for 10 months now I think that they will need a "Task Manager" app to allow you to setup which apps you are allowing to run in the background because letting every app you access start running in the background makes no sense.



    I posted some logistical questions earlier in this thread:
  • Reply 40 of 67
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    There is a major difference regardless of multi-tasking abilities, and that is power access. The machines you posted zre obviously plugged in. A cellphone needs to consider the longevity of the phone first and foremost.



    Who's arguing In the post #39 I wrote the same. Processor clock frequency has little to do with multitasking limitations (to a certain extent, sure; yes, for demanding applications you have to implement far more sophisticated process management)



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I don't think that Apple is against having 3rd-party apps run in the background but they do have to be careful how they do it. They've only had 3rd-party apps on the iphone for 10 months now I think that they will need a "Task Manager" app to allow you to setup which apps you are allowing to run in the background because letting every app you access start running in the background makes no sense.



    I posted some logistical questions earlier in this thread:



    In the post #39 I raised the question: is it really necessary? are benefits worth that hard work to find solutions to so many problems arising from allowing multitasking? what good would it do? A guy would be able to type "test test test" in Notes while music would play in background?
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