Apple rumored allowing real background apps on iPhone

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 73
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    With a 412MHz ARM processor and only 128MB of temporary memory, the first- and second-generation iPhone lines may struggle to support more than one or two background apps before becoming unusable. If the feature requires a new ARM processor or additional memory to be useful



    I have a hard time believing this. I have a 2 year old Blackberry Curve, not exactly sure which processor it has, but I have 16 applications and 9 email "real push" accounts running at all times without a hiccup ever.

    I can't imagine the hardware inside my blackberry is that far ahead of the iphone.
  • Reply 22 of 73
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GQB View Post


    ooh... can't wait for my battery to be drained even faster by some runaway cycle sucker.



    Choice is good. Having the ability to run multiple programs when you want and at our choosing is great. After all, you've the choice of running just one program at a time. This is why the Palm Pre seems promising, since it runs 4+ programs so fluidly. If you're pressed for battery life, then close the programs you don't need. With the iPhone, you have no choice other than through unofficial means (i.e. jailbreak).



    Runaway programs have little to do with the OS managing background process, whether it runs in the foreground or background. Poorly coded programs will consume CPU and battery life either way.
  • Reply 23 of 73
    Personally, I'd prefer push for most things. It does seem more refined than keeping things open.



    The only applications that I'd really like in the background are Internet radio applications. I'm just as happy listening to free music that's similar to a song I picked as hand picking enough specific songs to buy. I don't think I'd see any adverse effects. Battery life is fine for me while doing that, so I don't think opening Mail for like 10 seconds to see if the message I just received is anything important would be a battery killer. That's all I'd probably use it for.
  • Reply 24 of 73
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2 View Post


    Dude, right in the article less than an inch above your comment it says:



    "... a 412MHz ARM processor and only 128MB of (RAM) ..."



    That's just reality; not fabricated at all.



    This all boils down to OSX being 'too fat' for the hardware. Other smartphone OSes with less processing power and the same amount of RAM can multitask with no problem at all. In fact, I could open every application on the phone at once on my N95-8GB (that's a good 40-50 apps). The problem Apple has is that they have taken their desktop OS and tried to shoehorn it into a smartphone platform, seemingly without truly considering the limited resources available. Apple need to work on streamlining and tightening their code so that the base OS isn't such a resource hog, and then they could very easily and efficiently allow multitasking.
  • Reply 25 of 73
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacOldTimer View Post


    I held out until it was announced as did many other people that realized that the 3G was useless to upgrade to without it and not worth the upgrade price.



    You do realize that all software related upgrades concerning the iPhone 3G are also released on the original iPhone as well, right? So your point of Apple tricking you out of your money to upgrade to the 3G is a complete lie, because the one feature you felt was worthy of an upgrade did not warrant an upgrade to begin with if you had the original, so that was your own fault. Please just do us all a favor and stop trying to pull things out of your a** just so you can fulfill your own personal vendetta against a company you obviously feel has wronged you. We all grow very tired of reading your senseless rants about nothing.
  • Reply 26 of 73
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FreakyT View Post


    I could definitely see Apple adding this only for their next generation phones, citing some fabricated hardware restriction.



    I certainly hope I'm wrong though.



    Why would you think it's fabricated? What purpose would Apple heve for doing that?



    Considering the criticizm Apple has gotten because of this lack, it would have been better to have included it in the first place, if it were possible.



    If they feel the first gen devices can't manage it properly, then they shouldn't have it. If second gen devices can manage it, then they should have it.



    Why is that hard to believe?
  • Reply 27 of 73
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacOldTimer View Post


    Let me get this straight. Since Apple can't deliver on it's promise for Push your willing to wait for the next phone and have to Pay For It.



    That's beyond FanBoy.



    I think we're talking about two things here, and we don't know if either is true.



    We don't know that Apple is dropping Push, and we don't know if Apple is adopting multitasking.



    Hey, they could do both!



    Quote:

    If Apple can't deliver on it's plan because the phone doesn't have enough ram or processor power I'm going to be PISSED.



    They better make a solution for the phone I have and not the next phone otherwise it's FRAUD.



    Apple never said that the current models didn't have enough power for Push. They have also said that background wasn't in the cards, so you have nothing there to be pissed about.



    If somehow, at the last moment, Apple found they couldn't manage Push, it wouldn't be fraud. Fraud is only when someone knows in advance that what they are telling they will do isn't possible. That would have to be proven.



    Quote:

    They got sued 4 times this week alone just wait until they announce that the 3G isn't powerful enough to deliver as promised. The Class Action Lawsuits are going to be coming now from every country that has an iPhone.



    These people who sue for these reasons are idiots! They are looking for money. They figure this is a good way to try and get it.



    Quote:

    Apple get off your ass and give us what we paid for and you promised NOT what you think is right for us now.



    Why are you so upset about something that may very well be untrue?
  • Reply 28 of 73
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacOldTimer View Post


    Apple said that push would be out in September and yes I did base my purchase on this.

    I held out until it was announced as did many other people that realized that the 3G was useless to upgrade to without it and not worth the upgrade price.



    I'm sorry you were expecting to depend on this feature. I mean that.



    But to be realistic, this is software! 10.5 was delayed for a good 6 months. Vista was delayed three years!



    You know that problems crop up that are unexpected.



    There's no point in getting upset about it.
  • Reply 29 of 73
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dueces View Post


    I have a hard time believing this. I have a 2 year old Blackberry Curve, not exactly sure which processor it has, but I have 16 applications and 9 email "real push" accounts running at all times without a hiccup ever.

    I can't imagine the hardware inside my blackberry is that far ahead of the iphone.



    RIM's OS is a much simpler, Real Time OS, which is what many other older OS's are. More full featured OS's such as the one on the iPhone, have more processes running, and many more API's. The programs for the iPhone can be much more complex than those on the Blackberry.



    It's like the old Palmphones like my now mostly unused Treo 700p. They are very fast, though this OS is also non multitasking. But they can only do so much.
  • Reply 30 of 73
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,616member
    So, SDK 2.3 gets shipped to Devs, it contains new code for running your app in the background if the user chooses to do so. It reduces the CPU load and swaps the program into a 'disk cache' based in the users Flash memory. Due to the program running in a lower priority this balances out the access speed and allows for the lower load/swap time from flash.



    To enable background apps the user is warned that this may reduce battery life and that a portion of the flash space is consumed.



    This is rolled out and then with software 3.0 and the new handset in mid 2009 true push is launched and app developers either build their app with cloud push or as a background app. For example, Messaging clients run as cloud push but GPS tracker apps run as background apps.





    As I am on an O2 contract I will upgrade to the new handset if they enable users to activley re-roll their contracts with the new hardware again. My iPhone 16GB only cost me £60 last time when I upgraded from the first iPhone. And before the iPhone I upgraded an an annual basis so pretty much nothing has changed for me in the way I handle my contracts. Mind you, if you are a PAYG customer or a sim-free/jail break user your kinda fucked.
  • Reply 31 of 73
    frykefryke Posts: 217member
    I'm sure there are many uses for background push or actual background apps, but really it's messengers that would benefit the most. And let's get real: Those apps don't use that much processing power and they don't transmit that much data either. I'm sure "freedom" would create users that have three or four messengers plus FaceBook et al. open in the background (as well as their live poker apps all at the same time) which could lead to problems and crashes.



    But if Apple stated in September that it would take them longer than expected, I think they should have updated the public about their progress. To postpone it (or a different approach to it) to the next version altogether _is_ a tad fraudulent, because although it was a "future" feature when the iPhone 3G was announced, it clearly was one of the more important features talked about. Not delivering it at all could be at least seen as false advertising. (I know it's not in the ads themselves, but the way they hyped about it, that _was_ advertising the feature.) It's a bit of a laughing stock, a smartphone that can't handle a messenger in the background.
  • Reply 32 of 73
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    ...go nuts to corrupt phone's memory, to kill processes, to implant trojan horses etc... Sandbox? There's none that could never be pierced. There's a nice bunch of smart guys near keyboards now...
  • Reply 33 of 73
    Don't forget the iPhone 3G is very heavily subsidized so chances are O2 won't be handing you an upgrade on a plate until your 18months is up.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by irnchriz View Post


    So, SDK 2.3 gets shipped to Devs, it contains new code for running your app in the background if the user chooses to do so. It reduces the CPU load and swaps the program into a 'disk cache' based in the users Flash memory. Due to the program running in a lower priority this balances out the access speed and allows for the lower load/swap time from flash.



    To enable background apps the user is warned that this may reduce battery life and that a portion of the flash space is consumed.



    This is rolled out and then with software 3.0 and the new handset in mid 2009 true push is launched and app developers either build their app with cloud push or as a background app. For example, Messaging clients run as cloud push but GPS tracker apps run as background apps.





    As I am on an O2 contract I will upgrade to the new handset if they enable users to activley re-roll their contracts with the new hardware again. My iPhone 16GB only cost me £60 last time when I upgraded from the first iPhone. And before the iPhone I upgraded an an annual basis so pretty much nothing has changed for me in the way I handle my contracts. Mind you, if you are a PAYG customer or a sim-free/jail break user your kinda fucked.



  • Reply 34 of 73
    I can't see why allowing background apps should be a problem on the iPhone. After all, it's running OS X, right? And also, the iPhone would never need a task manager either... In fact, the original Mac OS already provides a solution to knowing what application is running: the glowing dot under the icon in the Dock. The iPhone could employ the same trick to show the users what applications are running without having the need to use a task manager.

    The only hold up, as has been already mentioned, is the limited amount of RAM available to running applications. For sure, Apple engineers could find a cool solution to that one too... It's not like the iPhone lacks memory...
  • Reply 35 of 73
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    If Apple were to do this properly, they would probably come up with a scheme like:



    1) Background Applications are stand-alone Applications. They might even extend a new base class called, for example, NSBackgroundApp. Indeed implementation wise they could be nothing more than modules that are run by a background application scheduler that can schedule for best resource conservation.



    2) These Applications are restricted in scope, but can of course use any system library apart from those that generate interfaces



    3) Their running time might be restricted, their memory usage likewise. E.g., they might only be able to run once every 5 seconds, and not exceed 1MB in running application size. In addition there might only be three or four background application slots.



    4) If you are actively using the phone, or if it is being charged, then considerations for battery life can be temporarily dropped. I.e., if you are browsing the web then running an internet radio application in the background isn't such a big deal, (but when the phone is trying to run on minimal power it would be).



    Also why would you swap out the application code to flash? Surely you would mmap the code on flash anyway, bringing it into RAM as required, and simply invalidating the pages if another application needs them?



    As for resources, there's nothing wrong with a 412MHz ARM and 128MB RAM. Even in low-power mode which it surely runs in most of the time it is 103MHz (? I don't know, but I presume the CPU clocks down). I had pre-emptive multitasking with shared libraries on an 8MHz 68000 (Amiga 500) that performs like a 2MHz ARM. I've even seen very basic pre-emptive multitasking running on a 4MHz Z80 with 128KB RAM (SymbOS) with a Win95-like desktop environment.
  • Reply 36 of 73
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacOldTimer View Post


    Let me get this straight. Since Apple can't deliver on it's promise for Push your willing to wait for the next phone and have to Pay For It.



    Reading comprehension continues to not be your strong suite \



    Let's review his comment:



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nagromme View Post


    I like Apple's original solution--clean and efficient. I hope they complete that plan.



    Your absolutely correct "I hope they complete that plan" is exactly the same as "since Apple can't deliver ... your willing to wait for the next phone and have to pay for it"











    Quote:

    That's beyond FanBoy.



    Your beyond anti-fanboy. You loathe Apple and their products and they can never do anything that isn't worthy of your criticism. Logic and rational thought are your enemy, and anyone who disagrees with you is shallow and biased.



    Quote:

    If Apple can't deliver on it's plan because the phone doesn't have enough ram or processor power I'm going to be PISSED.



    If Apple refunded your money (if you do indeed own product rather then just posting on forums) you'd still probably be pissed



    Quote:

    They better make a solution for the phone I have and not the next phone otherwise it's FRAUD.



    Really? Push wasn't part of the originally shipping phone, and it was presented as a potential new feature. And there is no confirmation that they still won't deliver it, just lots of rampant speculation - once again.



    Quote:

    They got sued 4 times this week alone just wait until they announce that the 3G isn't powerful enough to deliver as promised.



    These lawsuits will go the way of every other class action lawsuit, the lawyers will make out big and the "normal people" will get a penance as a "settlement" since the claims are essentially baseless, but under our screwy legal system it's cheaper to pay the sharks off then fight them. Sigh - for once I would like to see a company like Apple sue the scum lawyers that go on these fishing expeditions and recover their legal costs in dealing with this tripe.



    Quote:

    The Class Action Lawsuits are going to be coming now from every country that has an iPhone.



    hehe -that's funny - our legal system is laughed at in most other civilized countries, I doubt you will see such frivolous lawsuits in many other countries.



    Quote:

    Apple get off your ass and give us what we paid for and you promised NOT what you think is right for us now.



    Dude, you really need to stay off the rumor sites - you have anger management issues and the stress is probably going to stroke you out
  • Reply 37 of 73
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrochester View Post


    This all boils down to OSX being 'too fat' for the hardware. Other smartphone OSes with less processing power and the same amount of RAM can multitask with no problem at all. In fact, I could open every application on the phone at once on my N95-8GB (that's a good 40-50 apps). The problem Apple has is that they have taken their desktop OS and tried to shoehorn it into a smartphone platform, seemingly without truly considering the limited resources available. Apple need to work on streamlining and tightening their code so that the base OS isn't such a resource hog, and then they could very easily and efficiently allow multitasking.



    Yep, my Tilt has a 400mhz processor and 100MB or so of ram and I can run AIM, Live Messenger and Live Email (both of which sync every 15 minutes with my contacts online, so if I update a contact online or on my computer it gets updated to my phone). In addition I can easily open and keep open Opera without the phone crashing. I will though suggest problems in Windows Mobile's past have really been too little memory though I have always enjoyed it very much since getting my first PocketPC in 2000.



    But the iPhone OS is fat. Windows Mobile currently takes between 32mb and 64mb depending on the rom. I think the iPhone OS was rumoured to take upwards of 700mb (or that is how much is reserved on the disk for it). In some aspects the iPhone was ahead mostly in great display and intergrated large amounts of memory which is first. In addition the GUI was far more user friendly for touch. But that is changing. The new WM now have large pixel displays, look at the Touch HD or Xperia. On my tilt now, I don't need a stylus for most functions thanx to TouchFlo2D. But on the otherhand I like a resitive screen as the stylus does allow more accurate input especially in drawings or note taking (without typing, its faster).



    I do own a Touch, its fun. Love alot of the games. I do sometimes wonder if those app downloads and game downloads are wrongly attributed to the iPhone and not the Touch. In addition in regards to Windows Mobile (and its the same as my BF owns a Symbian phone) there is no way to track usage as you can download from such a huge variety of sites.



    My last complaint is programs like AIM or even Pandora. I would love to listen to Pandora while I browse and AIM is useless as I'm not gonna check ever 15 min or hour to see if I got a message. Might as well keep my Windows Mobile phone which alerts me. Otherwise I would forget, people would think they sent me a message but I wouldn't get it till much later. The only thing AIM is useful for is if I wanto communicate now with someone online. I for the life of me can't see while Apple didn't address this from day one with either iChat or allow AIM to be a background task.
  • Reply 38 of 73
    s8er01zs8er01z Posts: 144member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2 View Post


    Dude, right in the article less than an inch above your comment it says:



    "... a 412MHz ARM processor and only 128MB of (RAM) ..."



    That's just reality; not fabricated at all.



    x2... I don't know what the OS chews up on it's own but I have several applications that can barely run on their own and give high memory usage warniings. Multiple applications on this phone would be a big failure unless it was limited to specific low memory applications.
  • Reply 39 of 73
    s8er01zs8er01z Posts: 144member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DocNo42 View Post


    Your beyond anti-fanboy. You loathe Apple and their products and they can never do anything that isn't worthy of your criticism. Logic and rational thought are your enemy, and anyone who disagrees with you is shallow and biased.



    wut? Only two sides exist to that coin..your either a fanboy or not? How can you be something else?
  • Reply 40 of 73
    LOL, seems like WM task manger isn't so stupid now eh Steve. I wonder how they are going to spin the fact that they can't get Push working and now have to use background processes.



    FYI: Backgrounder works fine. People who say battery life is worst....no shit, I have multiple apps open, it's expected. If I know I'm not going to be by my charger anytime soon, I don't run multiple apps, nor do I watch videos/movies. I've yet to be stuck somewhere with no more juice left in my phone.





    HEY AI, WHEN ARE YOU GUYS GONNA DO A iPhone APP.
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