I dont get into the network arguments either, but I can say just about every time I get a call from one of my iPhone friends the call gets dropped or doesnt connect.
I've rarely had that problem here in New York, despite the publicity involving it. And most of the times when it does happen, the other person says it's their fault, and they're not always on AT&T, sometimes, the horror of it all, they're on Verizon,
My ideal implementation of multitasking for the iPhone:
- Pinch out to disperse icons from the main menu.
- This would bring up a Safari-tabs esque menu with thumbnails of each running program.
- You can scroll through them and quit as necessary by "X"-ing out, like you would a Safari tab.
Of course, this would need to be done within reason and RAM storage limitation. Perhaps programs would need to be redone with this functionality to prevent erratic memory issues.
Tom Tom released version 1.3 of their app in the App store today. What's this got to do with anything you may ask?
Well, on the iTunes description for the app it clearly states the following:
"- ADD LOCATIONS from other applications and websites on your iPhone to your Tom Tom app and instantly navigate to them or store them as favourites for future use."
There's no indication on how this is performed within the 1.3 update that shows on the device at the moment. So could this function be only available in iPhone 4.0? Has Tom Tom's 1.3 app introduced a control that can be activated within other apps allowing you to insert an address from an app directly into Tom Tom's favourites?
An interesting development, I think.
Leads me to think iPhone 4.0 will be released for the iPhone upon the iPad being released too.
The iPhone OS, being based on OS X, is multitasking but in common with Unix as I understand it, is not a real-time operating system. Currently, I use apps such as RunKeeper that if implemented in a dedicated device, would employ interrupts either software driven or physical, such as detecting a signal on an input pin. Even if this implementation is provided by the iPhone hardware, OS X is not guaranteed to respond within a certain, guaranteed interval, which is a requirement of a real-time OS.
I wonder therefore, whether allowing arbitrary software to run in the background will impact the performance of time-critical software to the extent that accuracy is affected. I guess that precedents on the MB or MBP would be timing applications and ones that require feedback from the accelerometer. However, I would think that the timing requirement for these applications is less demanding. and the hardware more capable.
Another is SignalScopePro. This excellent app provides an oscilloscope and provides FFTs of signals. However, operation is limited basically to audio frequencies. The application is written too for the Mac OS but is just as susceptible to loss of accuracy through the operating system not servicing requests within a guaranteed interval.
Universal multitasking on the iPhone will probably require capabilities of the OS in managing applications that are probably more sophisticated than even those provided by Mac OS.
Android much more than doubled in usage since October. RIM is pulling even further ahead of Apple in users. And the proportion of iOS users has gone nowhere in that time period.
Some folks don't like facts.
It's easier to double your marketshare from 4% than from 14%, you know? I believe that's also a fact?
It is vitally important that iPhone OS devices remain simple for people to use. For techos who want to be able to 'fiddle', go 'fiddle' on an Android or a Windows mobile, or lug a netbook or notebook or desktop computer around with you and 'fiddle' to your heart's content.
There is a 'golden rule' that all technology companies, apart from Apple, have continually ignored - Keep it Simple Stupid. Do I need to mention remote controls on TVs? The VAST majority of current and prospective users of iPhone OS devices are not 'tech-heads'. They do not NEED to 'fiddle' with their devices. They NEED a device that is simple to use and is secure against virus and malware attacks.
So if multi-tasking limitations are relaxed it must be done in a way that keeps the simplicity, usability and security of current iPhone/iPod Touch devices intact.
Why should all of us that want the ability to run third party apps go "fiddle" with Androids or carry laptops, shouls I carry a laptop in a bag just to be able to listen to internet radio or be connected to irc (which has no use of push not's at all) while I'm doing other things?
I agree that simplicity and security should prioritized, but there's a limit as to when security concerns are more important than usability.
There's no inherent problem with enabling system wide background processes in relation to security, the app store review process would be a filter to keep malware and viruses out to a good enough extent.
I agree with the suggestion that backgrounding would be done through a exposé fashion, double click the home button and all your running apps would be displayed or dislpayed in a way that you can easily browse through the running apps, an X in the top right corner would terminate the app fully.
I rather not go down the Android route since the OS isn't the least bit interesting to me, but I really can't understand why a user toggleable multitasking would be a bad thing for ppl, we already get to choose if we want the phone to use 3G and location services to save/deplete battery, why not one more option?
OK, Pandora I get. But how exactly do you IM and play a game at the same time? Even if you didn't have the small screen of the iPhone to deal with and were on a desktop computer, you still really can't do both at the same time...
When I say the same time I don't mean that literally. I mean it's active.
So would you mind linking to an established dictionary definition of multitasking which verifies the one you just made up?
Somehow I don't think Pandora has anything whatsoever to do with the accepted definition of multitasking.
I don't care what you think, or what you somehow think. This is what people want, and until the iPhone gets it people will continue to say the iPhone doesn't have multi-tasking. And they'd be right. The most common complaint is you can't listen to internet radio while using another app. Personally I'm not a big net radio listener, but a lot of people are.
You apparently don't know it, but number two is exactly what happens now. The iPhone OS, just like its big brother, is a fully pre-emptive multitasking multithreaded OS. Haven't you ever bothered to read anything about ti?
Apple deliberately prevents most apps in the app store from doing this. The OS is quite capable of it, and is doing it all the time. That means that it's number one that Apple doesn't yet allow?EXCEPT for bundled applications.
Of course I know that.
What I doubt is that untrusted app-store applications are going to get the ability to run in background. The device and the OS are obviously capable of doing that. But Apple prevents it for very sound technical reasons.
But that does not mean Apple will not facilitate multi-tasking in the popular sense.
I wonder therefore, whether allowing arbitrary software to run in the background will impact the performance of time-critical software to the extent that accuracy is affected. I guess that precedents on the MB or MBP would be timing applications and ones that require feedback from the accelerometer. However, I would think that the timing requirement for these applications is less demanding. and the hardware more capable.
The iPhone already runs many processes in background.
Any application which is well written, could safely run in background with an adverse effect on battery or foreground performance.
The problem is simply one of trust. Apple cannot affordably vet all third party applications for technical compliance.
Yup, I think this is mostly what it will be. They might also figure out some solutions to very specific problems, like playing Pandora in the background. But I very much doubt we will see full blown 3rd party app multitasking. I just can't see, for example, putting Monopoly in the background as a running task. It just makes no sense from a performance/battery perspective to allow that, especially since that would provide zero benefit to the user (assuming rapid task switching becomes possible).
Focus on apps that will benefit the user from multitasking instead of Monopoly. It is rather sad that arguements against multi tasking are always made on such weak platforms. Beyound the fact that there are very useful apps that could benefit from multi tasking you have to also realize that such facilities gave zero impact if not being used.
Further if given s greater control over running apps user might be free to disable some of the back ground Apple apps that are in effect a waste for many. SMS for one and even E-Mail or Safari could also go. These apps consume precious RAM and CPU cycles that would be better targetted at user apps.
I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't given users more control over these apps. Especially considering that RAM space is a critical issue on iPhone. All this focus on the negativity with respect to multi tasking glosses over completely the wide ranging benefits one could enjoy if the facility was less constrained.
For example take Safari for example. One of the great features of iPhone, but it can suck the battery life out of iPhone if left on a page that auto updates often. Give the users the ability to completely close the app and the issue goes away.
I'm getting tired of all these comments implying that multitasking isn't there. IPhone OS has multitasked since day one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by esummers
I'm pretty sure that if Apple is going to do multitasking that it will mean GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) is coming to iPhone OS 4.0. Not really surprising, but awesome.
While I would love to see GCD and even OpenCL come to iPhone that has nothing to do with multi tasking as iPhone already does that. GCD is nothing more than a thread pool and benefits the most from multi core hardware.
Quote:
That also means that background processes are not going to work like typical background process. For example, they may not be able to talk to certain threads like the display thread. Everything would be scheduled so that the operating system can wake up the processor and perform all background processes simultaneously to conserve power (the way it works in Snow Leopard).
While I'm sure that iPhone OS will continue to adapt code from Mac OS I'm not sure you understand SL.
Quote:
By doing background processes with GCD, Apple can and will enforce limitations on what developers can do with it.
They don't need GCD to do that. Rather it is done with the task manager where they already exercise control over the number of user apps running. Besides you would not want to overload GCD with a bunch of extraneous management code. The thing that makes GCD work is the very quick code with low overhead.
Quote:
That is a good thing for the stability of the system by the way. This also means closures (a new C/C++/Obj-C feature required by GCD) are finally coming to the iPhone!
Let me just say I don't believe that will be the approach Apple takes. Now that doesn't mean that GCD and the other features of SL aren't coming to iPhone, it is just that they will come to iPhone for the same reason they did on Mac OS. I'm actually expecting Apple to offer up a couple of solutions for background apps. Some won't work well on iPhone such as a dashboard panel that gets a small percentage of CPU time. Others such as the use of a dock for process management will operate more or less equally across all hardware.
By the way I don't see much sense in GCD until we have multi core processors to really take advantage of the feature. Which leads to the question what is in A4.
I don't ever notice a decrease in performance or battery life when I leave programs open on my TP2.
This is what many here don't understand, it depends (insert iPad Joke here) upon the app. Some apps will have little if any impact on battery life. However there are some apps that will have a significant impact on battery life. Things like running Pandora in back ground, that will impact battery life, ought to be up to the user though.
Quote:
I think this is a myth perpetuated by the higher-ups at Apple to keep people like you accepting of the fact that the iphone hasn't had multitasking (until now.)
Well yeah it is in part Apple managing the user base. On the otherhand iPhone does have multitasking right now. That ability can impact battery life even now. Safari can kill the battery fairly quickly via a couple of possibilities. One is that it gets caught up in a bug that uses lots of CPU time even when not a forground app. The other issue seems to be that an auto updating web site will run in background effectively killing the battery.
So it isn't exactly a myth but it isn't the whole truth either. A background app can be perfectly well behaved or not.
Quote:
Think about it. All this time Steve Jobs has said how the iphone doesn't need multitasking and cited the same reasons as you repeat here, but now they're adding it?
Well user demand has been intense.
Quote:
It's just more of the same: Jobs says something that flies in the face of what people want, then people convince themselves they don't want it anymore. The same thing goes with flash.
Well Flash is an entirely different issue and frankly Apples position is justified. Apples position with respect to multitasking is entirely different.
For the iPhone they most likely designed around use cases that didn't foresee the need for user multi tasking. However as the platform matured it became more obvious what user needs where. This can be seen in the aborted attempt to push push notifications which only solved a limited number of user issues. The noise around push notifications has died down due to the realization that it is useless with respect to the way many want to use their phone. Thus the search for a viable multitasking environment.
In a way it is all about the evolution of the product. Management at Apple has more or less admitted surprise at app store and thus the variety of software available for the platform. At least they have the wisdom to look for a viable solution.
I can easily access 20 apps or more in an hour on my Phone without even breaking a sweat. There is absolutely no way all these could run without a severe battery and performance hit. It's simply not smart to let anyad every app you open to run in the background.
People aren't talking about any and every app. This is not a justification for being against multitasking. This is why I suspect Apple will have a specific way to run a limited number of apps in background. You are right in a sense though that you couldn't have twenty apps running by any stretch as the supplied RAM won't allow for it. In any event I do not think you are the norm here nor do I think most people have a desire to do that. The goal is simply to be able to run X number of apps in background to do things you couldn't otherwise do. For most people X wouldn't be much greater than two.
Quote:
No one should be running an IM app in the background on an iPhone. This is one that benefits greatly from Push Notifications.
that is your opinion but push notifications have been seen as a flop by many. Further push doesn't imply less power usage than polling. In any event concentrate on those apps that make sense for use with user multitasking. We already know about the things that don't make sense.
People aren't talking about any and every app. This is not a justification for being against multitasking.
I'm all for multitasking and I've even theorized how it will come to iPhone OS. It's pretty much everyone whining for multitasking that have said that Android and WebOS do it right and that Apple should follow suit. I disagree and have pointed out why those failures for the consumer.
Quote:
This is why I suspect Apple will have a specific way to run a limited number of apps in background. You are right in a sense though that you couldn't have twenty apps running by any stretch as the supplied RAM won't allow for it. In any event I do not think you are the norm here nor do I think most people have a desire to do that. The goal is simply to be able to run X number of apps in background to do things you couldn't otherwise do. For most people X wouldn't be much greater than two.
So many apps does the average use between restarting their phone? Remember, the popular argument is that it should work like Android and WebOS, not that Apple will introduce multitasking when they have user-friendly model in place that prevents every app you start from automatically running in the background.
Quote:
that is your opinion but push notifications have been seen as a flop by many. Further push doesn't imply less power usage than polling. In any event concentrate on those apps that make sense for use with user multitasking. We already know about the things that don't make sense.
Sure it does, it's one process designed to work for all app tied to it, It's a brilliant feature for most apps one would previously need to have run in the background. There is a reason Apple promoted this clever addition.
I can only hope that if/when Apple does intro foreground app multi-tasking that they have it as an option and leave it off by default. It really doesn't seem necessary to me; the minor annoyance of, say, having to exit Safari to do something else is minimal compared to the major potential annoyance of accidentally leaving some background app on which runs my battery down twice as fast.
What I doubt is that untrusted app-store applications are going to get the ability to run in background. The device and the OS are obviously capable of doing that. But Apple prevents it for very sound technical reasons.
But that does not mean Apple will not facilitate multi-tasking in the popular sense.
C.
Ok, then you should have stated it properly.
Too many people think that the OS doesn't multitask, which it does, and very well.
Comments
I dont get into the network arguments either, but I can say just about every time I get a call from one of my iPhone friends the call gets dropped or doesnt connect.
I've rarely had that problem here in New York, despite the publicity involving it. And most of the times when it does happen, the other person says it's their fault, and they're not always on AT&T, sometimes, the horror of it all, they're on Verizon,
No, just too lazy. The roads would be a far more civil place if more people drove standard transmissions.
/never owned a car with an automatic transmission
/never owned a front digger
I think it's the other way around. The people with manual are more aggressive; more in a hurry.
AND, they're not better drivers. They just think they are.
- Pinch out to disperse icons from the main menu.
- This would bring up a Safari-tabs esque menu with thumbnails of each running program.
- You can scroll through them and quit as necessary by "X"-ing out, like you would a Safari tab.
Of course, this would need to be done within reason and RAM storage limitation. Perhaps programs would need to be redone with this functionality to prevent erratic memory issues.
Just as an observation, this was your fourth post.
And??
Well, on the iTunes description for the app it clearly states the following:
"- ADD LOCATIONS from other applications and websites on your iPhone to your Tom Tom app and instantly navigate to them or store them as favourites for future use."
There's no indication on how this is performed within the 1.3 update that shows on the device at the moment. So could this function be only available in iPhone 4.0? Has Tom Tom's 1.3 app introduced a control that can be activated within other apps allowing you to insert an address from an app directly into Tom Tom's favourites?
An interesting development, I think.
Leads me to think iPhone 4.0 will be released for the iPhone upon the iPad being released too.
I wonder therefore, whether allowing arbitrary software to run in the background will impact the performance of time-critical software to the extent that accuracy is affected. I guess that precedents on the MB or MBP would be timing applications and ones that require feedback from the accelerometer. However, I would think that the timing requirement for these applications is less demanding. and the hardware more capable.
Another is SignalScopePro. This excellent app provides an oscilloscope and provides FFTs of signals. However, operation is limited basically to audio frequencies. The application is written too for the Mac OS but is just as susceptible to loss of accuracy through the operating system not servicing requests within a guaranteed interval.
Universal multitasking on the iPhone will probably require capabilities of the OS in managing applications that are probably more sophisticated than even those provided by Mac OS.
Any thoughts?
Some reality: http://gizmodo.com/5490299/android-s...one-stalls-out
Android much more than doubled in usage since October. RIM is pulling even further ahead of Apple in users. And the proportion of iOS users has gone nowhere in that time period.
Some folks don't like facts.
It's easier to double your marketshare from 4% than from 14%, you know? I believe that's also a fact?
And??
Just that three previous posts hardly makes you an integral member of the AI community.
It is vitally important that iPhone OS devices remain simple for people to use. For techos who want to be able to 'fiddle', go 'fiddle' on an Android or a Windows mobile, or lug a netbook or notebook or desktop computer around with you and 'fiddle' to your heart's content.
There is a 'golden rule' that all technology companies, apart from Apple, have continually ignored - Keep it Simple Stupid. Do I need to mention remote controls on TVs? The VAST majority of current and prospective users of iPhone OS devices are not 'tech-heads'. They do not NEED to 'fiddle' with their devices. They NEED a device that is simple to use and is secure against virus and malware attacks.
So if multi-tasking limitations are relaxed it must be done in a way that keeps the simplicity, usability and security of current iPhone/iPod Touch devices intact.
Why should all of us that want the ability to run third party apps go "fiddle" with Androids or carry laptops, shouls I carry a laptop in a bag just to be able to listen to internet radio or be connected to irc (which has no use of push not's at all) while I'm doing other things?
I agree that simplicity and security should prioritized, but there's a limit as to when security concerns are more important than usability.
There's no inherent problem with enabling system wide background processes in relation to security, the app store review process would be a filter to keep malware and viruses out to a good enough extent.
I agree with the suggestion that backgrounding would be done through a exposé fashion, double click the home button and all your running apps would be displayed or dislpayed in a way that you can easily browse through the running apps, an X in the top right corner would terminate the app fully.
I rather not go down the Android route since the OS isn't the least bit interesting to me, but I really can't understand why a user toggleable multitasking would be a bad thing for ppl, we already get to choose if we want the phone to use 3G and location services to save/deplete battery, why not one more option?
OK, Pandora I get. But how exactly do you IM and play a game at the same time? Even if you didn't have the small screen of the iPhone to deal with and were on a desktop computer, you still really can't do both at the same time...
When I say the same time I don't mean that literally. I mean it's active.
So would you mind linking to an established dictionary definition of multitasking which verifies the one you just made up?
Somehow I don't think Pandora has anything whatsoever to do with the accepted definition of multitasking.
I don't care what you think, or what you somehow think. This is what people want, and until the iPhone gets it people will continue to say the iPhone doesn't have multi-tasking. And they'd be right. The most common complaint is you can't listen to internet radio while using another app. Personally I'm not a big net radio listener, but a lot of people are.
You apparently don't know it, but number two is exactly what happens now. The iPhone OS, just like its big brother, is a fully pre-emptive multitasking multithreaded OS. Haven't you ever bothered to read anything about ti?
Apple deliberately prevents most apps in the app store from doing this. The OS is quite capable of it, and is doing it all the time. That means that it's number one that Apple doesn't yet allow?EXCEPT for bundled applications.
Of course I know that.
What I doubt is that untrusted app-store applications are going to get the ability to run in background. The device and the OS are obviously capable of doing that. But Apple prevents it for very sound technical reasons.
But that does not mean Apple will not facilitate multi-tasking in the popular sense.
C.
I wonder therefore, whether allowing arbitrary software to run in the background will impact the performance of time-critical software to the extent that accuracy is affected. I guess that precedents on the MB or MBP would be timing applications and ones that require feedback from the accelerometer. However, I would think that the timing requirement for these applications is less demanding. and the hardware more capable.
The iPhone already runs many processes in background.
Any application which is well written, could safely run in background with an adverse effect on battery or foreground performance.
The problem is simply one of trust. Apple cannot affordably vet all third party applications for technical compliance.
C.
Yup, I think this is mostly what it will be. They might also figure out some solutions to very specific problems, like playing Pandora in the background. But I very much doubt we will see full blown 3rd party app multitasking. I just can't see, for example, putting Monopoly in the background as a running task. It just makes no sense from a performance/battery perspective to allow that, especially since that would provide zero benefit to the user (assuming rapid task switching becomes possible).
Focus on apps that will benefit the user from multitasking instead of Monopoly. It is rather sad that arguements against multi tasking are always made on such weak platforms. Beyound the fact that there are very useful apps that could benefit from multi tasking you have to also realize that such facilities gave zero impact if not being used.
Further if given s greater control over running apps user might be free to disable some of the back ground Apple apps that are in effect a waste for many. SMS for one and even E-Mail or Safari could also go. These apps consume precious RAM and CPU cycles that would be better targetted at user apps.
I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't given users more control over these apps. Especially considering that RAM space is a critical issue on iPhone. All this focus on the negativity with respect to multi tasking glosses over completely the wide ranging benefits one could enjoy if the facility was less constrained.
For example take Safari for example. One of the great features of iPhone, but it can suck the battery life out of iPhone if left on a page that auto updates often. Give the users the ability to completely close the app and the issue goes away.
Dave
I'm pretty sure that if Apple is going to do multitasking that it will mean GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) is coming to iPhone OS 4.0. Not really surprising, but awesome.
While I would love to see GCD and even OpenCL come to iPhone that has nothing to do with multi tasking as iPhone already does that. GCD is nothing more than a thread pool and benefits the most from multi core hardware.
That also means that background processes are not going to work like typical background process. For example, they may not be able to talk to certain threads like the display thread. Everything would be scheduled so that the operating system can wake up the processor and perform all background processes simultaneously to conserve power (the way it works in Snow Leopard).
While I'm sure that iPhone OS will continue to adapt code from Mac OS I'm not sure you understand SL.
By doing background processes with GCD, Apple can and will enforce limitations on what developers can do with it.
They don't need GCD to do that. Rather it is done with the task manager where they already exercise control over the number of user apps running. Besides you would not want to overload GCD with a bunch of extraneous management code. The thing that makes GCD work is the very quick code with low overhead.
That is a good thing for the stability of the system by the way. This also means closures (a new C/C++/Obj-C feature required by GCD) are finally coming to the iPhone!
Let me just say I don't believe that will be the approach Apple takes. Now that doesn't mean that GCD and the other features of SL aren't coming to iPhone, it is just that they will come to iPhone for the same reason they did on Mac OS. I'm actually expecting Apple to offer up a couple of solutions for background apps. Some won't work well on iPhone such as a dashboard panel that gets a small percentage of CPU time. Others such as the use of a dock for process management will operate more or less equally across all hardware.
By the way I don't see much sense in GCD until we have multi core processors to really take advantage of the feature. Which leads to the question what is in A4.
Dave
I don't ever notice a decrease in performance or battery life when I leave programs open on my TP2.
This is what many here don't understand, it depends (insert iPad Joke here) upon the app. Some apps will have little if any impact on battery life. However there are some apps that will have a significant impact on battery life. Things like running Pandora in back ground, that will impact battery life, ought to be up to the user though.
I think this is a myth perpetuated by the higher-ups at Apple to keep people like you accepting of the fact that the iphone hasn't had multitasking (until now.)
Well yeah it is in part Apple managing the user base. On the otherhand iPhone does have multitasking right now. That ability can impact battery life even now. Safari can kill the battery fairly quickly via a couple of possibilities. One is that it gets caught up in a bug that uses lots of CPU time even when not a forground app. The other issue seems to be that an auto updating web site will run in background effectively killing the battery.
So it isn't exactly a myth but it isn't the whole truth either. A background app can be perfectly well behaved or not.
Think about it. All this time Steve Jobs has said how the iphone doesn't need multitasking and cited the same reasons as you repeat here, but now they're adding it?
Well user demand has been intense.
It's just more of the same: Jobs says something that flies in the face of what people want, then people convince themselves they don't want it anymore. The same thing goes with flash.
Well Flash is an entirely different issue and frankly Apples position is justified. Apples position with respect to multitasking is entirely different.
For the iPhone they most likely designed around use cases that didn't foresee the need for user multi tasking. However as the platform matured it became more obvious what user needs where. This can be seen in the aborted attempt to push push notifications which only solved a limited number of user issues. The noise around push notifications has died down due to the realization that it is useless with respect to the way many want to use their phone. Thus the search for a viable multitasking environment.
In a way it is all about the evolution of the product. Management at Apple has more or less admitted surprise at app store and thus the variety of software available for the platform. At least they have the wisdom to look for a viable solution.
Dave
I can easily access 20 apps or more in an hour on my Phone without even breaking a sweat. There is absolutely no way all these could run without a severe battery and performance hit. It's simply not smart to let anyad every app you open to run in the background.
People aren't talking about any and every app. This is not a justification for being against multitasking. This is why I suspect Apple will have a specific way to run a limited number of apps in background. You are right in a sense though that you couldn't have twenty apps running by any stretch as the supplied RAM won't allow for it. In any event I do not think you are the norm here nor do I think most people have a desire to do that. The goal is simply to be able to run X number of apps in background to do things you couldn't otherwise do. For most people X wouldn't be much greater than two.
No one should be running an IM app in the background on an iPhone. This is one that benefits greatly from Push Notifications.
that is your opinion but push notifications have been seen as a flop by many. Further push doesn't imply less power usage than polling. In any event concentrate on those apps that make sense for use with user multitasking. We already know about the things that don't make sense.
Dave
People aren't talking about any and every app. This is not a justification for being against multitasking.
I'm all for multitasking and I've even theorized how it will come to iPhone OS. It's pretty much everyone whining for multitasking that have said that Android and WebOS do it right and that Apple should follow suit. I disagree and have pointed out why those failures for the consumer.
This is why I suspect Apple will have a specific way to run a limited number of apps in background. You are right in a sense though that you couldn't have twenty apps running by any stretch as the supplied RAM won't allow for it. In any event I do not think you are the norm here nor do I think most people have a desire to do that. The goal is simply to be able to run X number of apps in background to do things you couldn't otherwise do. For most people X wouldn't be much greater than two.
So many apps does the average use between restarting their phone? Remember, the popular argument is that it should work like Android and WebOS, not that Apple will introduce multitasking when they have user-friendly model in place that prevents every app you start from automatically running in the background.
that is your opinion but push notifications have been seen as a flop by many. Further push doesn't imply less power usage than polling. In any event concentrate on those apps that make sense for use with user multitasking. We already know about the things that don't make sense.
Sure it does, it's one process designed to work for all app tied to it, It's a brilliant feature for most apps one would previously need to have run in the background. There is a reason Apple promoted this clever addition.
Of course I know that.
What I doubt is that untrusted app-store applications are going to get the ability to run in background. The device and the OS are obviously capable of doing that. But Apple prevents it for very sound technical reasons.
But that does not mean Apple will not facilitate multi-tasking in the popular sense.
C.
Ok, then you should have stated it properly.
Too many people think that the OS doesn't multitask, which it does, and very well.