Apple's iPhone 4.0 software to deliver multitasking support - Page 6

Again the iPads blackbox mode for iPhone apps may get a lot more interesting come 4.0. It could be much like the Tabs page in iPad Safari, but with full size iPhone apps running simultaneouly. That could be an astounding feature. The foremost app that you've interacted with would have a blue border in place of the dark gray, and touching the 2x button would zoom into that App.

No, I am comparing apples lack of progress in market share with the meaning of stagnation.

Apple's "economic growth" is a totally different subject than their failure to grow market share.

Tell me how I miscomprehend the definition of stagnation.

I second this motion

The stagnation of the iPhone market share and the failure to update the OS might be linked, given that other OS's are surging in popularity. I don't know the answer. Others here have a host of explanations as to why Apple is, for example, falling further behind RIM.

I asked what the heck is taking so long in catching up to the competition vis a vis OS capabilities, and pointed out that ground is being lost in the meantime.

I've addressed this point before... This is exactly how Apple separates themselves from the competition... For two years people said that without cut/copy/paste the iPhone was dead....in OS3 they implemented it better than any other smart phone. They do the R&D until they figure out the best solution. I'm sure multi-tasking will be done in the same manner....

So….i"Genius" you still haven’t answered OUR question…Why do you troll? Did you get duped into buying a Droid and this is how you vent all of your anger?

Apple sucks!! Apple sucks!!! There, there iGenius…. I’m sure by 2011 Google should upgrade your phone!

I've refrained from reporting your insults.

Of course. But that is just an example of the word's usage, and is not a definition.

All this inane discussion about how Apple might implement multitasking and switching...the solution is already out there. Spend five minutes with a Palm Pre and you have a wonderful, elegant and intuitive solution to multitasking.

It's simple. It's brilliant. It works. Flick up to see your apps (they show up as smaller windows), swipe left or right to slide through the apps, flick up on an app to kill it, click an app to have it come to full screen.

As Ireland wrote: Next

As someone who uses an iPod Touch daily for email, games, web browsing... I don't miss the multitasking that much, sure there are a couple of things that would be okay to have, but I really don't miss it that much!
Android will flail just like other Linux distributions for consumer use. Why? fragmentation, crap ware, viruses... Android has already had it's first exploit. And HTC has already released a phone with mal-ware installed! I know this was probably from a refurbished phone, but it illustrates that handset makers really don't give a shiI what they distribute. Apple does care! The problem is that with Android, the commonality that Google is trying to put together goes against the telecoms desire to have separation from the competition. With out separation, it really does not matter which carrier you go with FTMP. They become irrelevant and as a big multi-national company, irrelevancy is not acceptable, they want power, they want control.

For the iPhone and Touch a non-multitasking configuration like they have is fine by me. Now I will expect multitasking in the iPad as that is more of a working computer. Docs, spreadsheets ...

KRR

Do you think that the new OS will perform poorly on the current hardware?

Don't confuse the issue.

Jobs made statements about Flash back in 2007, when multitasking wasn't feasible (even running the iPod app when trying to use Safari caused a noticable slow down). Now we're coming up on the 4th HW and OS release of the iPhone.

On top of that it's March 2010 and Adobe still hasn't delivered Flash to the "open" Android platform and Mozilla has disable Flash in Firefox Mobile on Maemo due to performance issues.

So I don't what part of your statement about multitasking as an option has to do with Flash and the battery.

Where did ever try to prove that the graph was global? I recall saying that it did not specify anywhere in the article.

I agree with this, but that's still a true background process. I wasn't really discussing the GUI for implementing my ideas.

I rather picture an interface similar to safari where one icon represents the number of open and "frozen" apps, including your apple processes such as mail, safari, iPod etc. Clicking this allows you to shift through all of these apps and when you choose a "frozen" app, it simple reloads the page as safari would, rather than the entire code for the application, thus conserving battery life. Similar to safari, the total number of open and "frozen" apps could be capped at some limit which will work with the amount of ram available to the device.

You misunderstand my usage of the word divine. It had nothing whatsoever do do with any deity.

I was using it as a verb and not as an adjective. If it would help, I could use smaller words.

Any application that needs to "save state" can/should already do this with the callbacks already available in the API.

*

I suspect Apple will go with an X in the upper left corner like they did with Safari. As others have noted, the Pre's multitasking is very similar to how Safari currently works. One thing the iPhone does not have is a gesture area below the screen, so the discussion on how to activate Expose seems perfectly reasonable. Home button combos, multitouch gestures, and hot corners are all possibilities. I'm a fan of good design, so I'm very interested in what Apple will choose to do.

I think that I need to limit my vocabulary around here. Usually, I find that specific words work great to convey specific meanings. Here, however, those words seem to be often misunderstood.

I missed that story. Are the analysts reliable? Got a cite?

And I didn't cherry-pick. The story I based my comments upon has been all over the tech press for a couple of days.

Since I've wasted enough time on you as is, and you've completely neglected the actual article in which your whole line of off-topic discussion here could be adequately explained, I'll merely link this;

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showp...5&postcount=42

Now, perhaps you can attempt to live up to your chosen screenname, rather than relying on an extensive vocabulary with which to try to harass others. Read, and try to comprehend.

See, and this is where Apple tries their hardest to make products for even the dumbest of morons. That's not an insult to iphone users or anything, I just see what you're saying as "But there are people really dumb out there and they will complain, so Apple has to consider them first and foremost."

Having a limit to the number of apps one can open at once is exactly the type of thing you'll see. There's no system on earth that allows someone to open an infinite amount of applications, because there's no system on earth with an infinite amount of memory.

If someone can't figure out why their phone is running slow and they have 40 apps running, then screw them. They have no concept of what's happening behind the scenes. Its not their business to know what's happening, but they definitely should accept the limitations of ANY given device.

There is a reasonable way of going about implementing acceptable multitasking, and it won't involve allowing people to open every single app they've ever owned at once. I know a lot of people like the iphone because "it just works" but sooner or later people have to realize what's happening and why their device isn't capable of infinite amounts of processing power.

So basically, having the ability to only open a certain number of apps is NOT a problem, and I don't see people rejecting the iphone or Apple because of it.

It's typically not an end user option though, but perhaps it doesn't need to be. What I really want is the choice to exit and close some apps, and have others exit and run in the background when I hit the home button.

Either way, I'm probably going to jailbreak my iPhone if I get an iPad (I'm tethering to my iPhone, whether Jobs endorses it or not), so I will have multitasking if i want it. I'd much rather have a solution straight from Apple though.

I own an iPhone. I am disappointed at the lack of capabilities. I come from years of owning pocket computers, most recently a Treo prior to the iPhone. I was shocked that the iPhone neglects basic stuff that Palm implemented over a decade ago.

Forgive me for trying to be objective. Please stop making incorrect assumptions, especially about me.

News just reported the smartphone market grew 37% last year.

APPLE iPhone grew 97%.

Stagnant. Really.

Right there is where you went wrong!

I'm sorry, you're right. I falsely assumed you were a bitter Droid owner....Now your attitude REALLY makes senseTo be a fan of Palm and to have to watch their complete and total implosion when the Pre and Pixi had so many good ideas You poor thing iGenius! I really pity you.

It is an insult because you just referred to my mother as "dumb" and a "moron" simply because she doesn't care about finding with gadgets. She has has plenty of other skills and advanced degrees, though not in computer science. She doesn't care about or need to know how every app will affect her iPhone, she only needs to know that it will work as advertised so she can focus on the other things in life that do matter to her.

Apple didn't revitalize the smartphone industry and make every mobile OS maker switch gears to follow Apple's lead because they were making fisher price toys. Cars with automatic transmissions weren't designed for people who are too stupid to learn to drive a manual. Restaurants weren't created for people who are too dumb to cook for themselves.

Not to cause an argument but your statement is a half-truth. Yes the iPhone percentages did grow for Apple but during the last quarter Android saw the largest growth overall in the smartphone market.

I couldn't care less what is being said on this thread. I'm just glad that multitasking is coming. It is blantantly missing and the iPhone would lose marketshare. Hopefully they clean up the rest of the OS and have a proper PNS that doesn't get in the way and you can see the history of those you missed.

I like Dilger's posts but didn't he speak against this in his posts and on the Tech Night Owl? Yes, I also read Roughly Drafted as well. Good read.

Imho multitasking on pda/cellphones are only a bad thing. Important apps already mustitask by default. We will a lot of noob users who destory their batter in 1 hour because they have a lot of apps multitasking without knowing it.

Sorry but this is a bad news if true, that's just my opinion and i know many users who would want to have multitasking but usually they don't gave nay good reason... just because their computer multitask.

You're a troll as already stated. I hope for you that you are a troll, otherwise you are just stupid and/or live in another world.

Apple is leading the way, the things you mentition are not in iphone os for a reason. maybe they will be implemented... but let's see how flash is working if present in other pda or phones, and about multitasking.. it is a battery killer and only few users would have advantages in it.

So you're saying your mom wouldn't understand, and would complain when her iphone told her she had too many apps open at once?

The trick here is for Apple to make it easier to close apps than to keep them running in the background. The way you exit an app is just by hitting the home button right? Well if they implemented something so hitting the home button just stuck the app in the background, then yes, I could see how people would be upset when they went to open another app and the iphone said it needed to close one of the apps in the background.

So imagine making a complete swipe from the top left corner down to the bottom right hand corner to stick the program into the background. The imagine some kind of task manager at the home screen (perhaps to the left of the search screen) that showed the running apps, and allowed you to close them easily from that screen.

Why is any of what I say unreasonable? How could any of that be confusing for someone like your mother, who has multiple degrees and clearly has a fully functional brain (and obviously a woman of decent intelligence since she didn't raise a complete fool )

edit:

BTW with bing, coreplayer (with night at the museum open and paused), facebook (connected), Midomi, morphgear (running super mario world), Opera Mobile 10 (at wikipedia's site), resco file explorer, and windows live open (connected and ready for conversations) I'm still at 90% battery life, and my phone still runs fine.

I've owned an iPhone since about a week after it first released. Finally upgraded that first generation phone a few months ago to the 3GS. I have to say, it's come a long way, in many subtle and meaningful ways. It's also improved in many obvious ways (camera and video being one obvious area).

Is it the end-all, be-all of smart phones? The only kid on the block? No, of course not. N1 and Droid are respectable alternatives, and there are others. I have tried quite a few, but find them relatively inconvenient, and far less intuitive than my iPhone (and it's not just a familiarity thing). Still, they are worth considering and present good competition.


I have a couple of questions and concerns about "multi-tasking" on the iPhone. (Mind you, I am thinking device-specific here. I understand the benefits of multi-tasking both 'conceptually' and tangibly on my main workstations... I'm asking specific to this device... thanks.)

First, what can I really expect to gain from it? No-one has yet given me a clear and directly DEMONSTRABLE benefit of having multi-tasking fully enabled on my iPhone. Given how well the iPhone functions now, how would that functionality demonstrably improve? I need tangible examples, please...

Second, battery life. We're already pushing the envelope here on small devices. I don't want my battery life shortened even more. I'm sure someone will give good examples of "multi-tasking on iPhone" benefits. Can you also show how that benefit outweighs the inevitable loss of battery life?

Third, performance. With more apps running concurrently, things are going to slow down. More instructions competing for cycles... it's the nature of the beast.


So, multi-tasking will surely reduce battery life and performance, right? I'd really need to see tangible benefits that are worth the tradeoff in lost performance, battery life, and security before I sign on to "fixing what ain't broke" in my daily use of this device.

Now, the iPad could be another story entirely. But, I haven't got the experience there to compare...

Thanks for your consideration!

I'm not a "fan" of corporations. Not even sports teams. Not any actors, or any particular brand of beer. I own a Honda, and I'm satisfied, but next time around I'll look at other good brands too. I used to own Honda motorcycles, but these days, I think other companies have been making better ones.

If I were to buy a Triumph or a BMW or a Harley, there's not a chance in hell that I'd buy logo-ed apparel. My identity is not bound by corporate or product sales figures, nor by advertising the products I choose to buy.

I wanted the Pre to do well, but when it became apparent that they would be unlikely to gain any critical mass, I lost interest. It saddens me to see how badly Palm is doing, but I don't really care much.

100% agree.

I think it's pretty hard to figure out the nuts and bolts of how Apple will actually implement multitasking so I'm not going to try. I'll just wait until it comes out.

I have been thinking about this issue a bit since so many of the naysayers attack the iPad for it's lack of multitasking. Basically, I think about 95% of iPhone users are fine without multitasking. Pandora and IM clients seem to be the biggest reason for requiring multitasking. I suspect that if Apple could have only two apps running at one time that this would resolve 80% of the remaining issues. They'll still be criticized but for not having "true" multitasking, but from a practical perspective, multitasking will no longer be a problem for all but a few users on the fringe.

...deleted due to wrong statement

Yes I agree - why has this guy not been banned as all he does is post inflammatory crap.

I know that I could change it, but I need that functionality for the iPod lurking in my iPhone!

Then again, I actually miss that I could navigate my traditional iPods sight-unseen in my jacket pocket via the clickwheel; that was lost with the iPhone OS touch interface. Knowing where the iPhone home button is and having the play/pause/skip buttons on the cord of my in-ear earbuds is my closest approximation.

I agree. We all assume that everyone knows all about computers. But most of my friends just want to use a device that works. If I told them they had to manage which programs were running and which ones were not, they probably wouldn't use it. It's just too much to think about.

Most people have a thousand other things on their minds (kids, bills, jobs, TV, etc). They bought the iphone because they wanted something that just worked. Multi-tasking sounds great for us who spend most of our lives on a computer. But think for once about your friends and relatives. I hope Apple is thinking about them. Because once they implement multi-tasking, the haters will just jump to some other missing feature in the hope to force Apple to follow what they consider is the perfect business plan.

http://www.androidcentral.com/admob-...y-double-again

What's the point with the fragmentation? Does it stop you from using the platform? Or does it stop developers from developing new applications? As a developer I can tell you that there is no problem to create an application that will work on almost every Android device.

"Google's Android was the big gainer for the period -- seeing its market share rise to 7.1 percent, from 2.8 percent previously. Apple's iPhone experienced a small gain, edging above 25 percent, from 24.8 percent before."

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/201...age_falls.html

This has been pretty much all over the tech news sites for a couple of days. I thought it was common knowledge.