Apple's iPhone 4.0 to support multitasking via Expose-like interface

1235715

Comments

  • Reply 81 of 293
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by justflybob View Post


    Nope. Not until the iPhone is refreshed in late June.



    I'm not so sure of those dates. Apple has historically released the next iPhone OS Betas and SDK in mid-March with the release date on the new HW right around the next HW release of late-June/early-July.



    We'll need, by my calculations, at least 2.5 months of Beta testing the next OS. Sure, they could work it like the iPad and sell it with an older version of the OS at first, but I am not sure that would well for the iPhone.



    I expect the next Special Event to be held in April.
  • Reply 82 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cmf2 View Post


    They've come up with a different solution for the iPad in OS 3.2 though. There will be a disk mode, just not the traditional one we are accustomed to seeing. It will make it to the iPhone in due time.



    Really? Has it been explained in detail???
  • Reply 83 of 293
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Now all of a sudden multi-tasking is cool, isn't it guys?



    It's so funny how these things (like copy and paste) are looked at with great disdain up until Apple actually implements it.



    From here on out: Stop making excuses for why Apple has left something out. Start thinking for yourself. Artificial limitations require no excuse other than the fact that development hasn't reached that point yet.



    The next time someone bitches about the ipad or iphone missing something, don't try to come up with some bogus excuse for why it's not there. You're not fooling anyone.
  • Reply 84 of 293
    cmf2cmf2 Posts: 1,427member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BRussell View Post


    I don't see them implementing full-blown multitasking on the iPhone, unless their goal is to destroy the simplicity of the OS.



    Look at the UI for task-switching on computers: It's a total disaster. All the recent iterations of both Mac and Windows OS have gone to great lengths to deal with that disaster, and they've only made it worse - Expose and Spaces and Aero peek and Flip 3D and Live Thumbnails - they just clutter the UI and confuse anyone who isn't a computer geek. Even the simple fact that you can close a window on the Mac, revealing a hidden window but leaving the menu bar on the original program is confusing to many people who use a Mac all the time.



    Presumably it will be simpler on the iPhone, but I see it confusing more people than it helps. Let's say you do run Pandora in the background. How often are people going to quit Pandora but unintentionally leave it running, and not know what's going on. Why is there music still playing? They go into the iPod app trying to turn it off, but that's not it. I see people do this right now with music on the iPhone - they think they can stop their music just by hitting the home button, and they don't understand why it stayed on. Maybe they'll even get music playing both via the iPod and via Pandora simultaneously.



    I want someone to describe how this is going to work and not be a UI disaster that confuses the hell out of regular people, while adding very little for power users.



    People get consfused with OSX because clicking "x" does not close the program (most of the time). That would not be the case in iPhone OS. Safari has already shown how the Expose portion would work (although it sounds like we will be dealing with icons not images of the app). You would simply activate expose and an "x" would appear in the top left corner of each icon. Click the "x" and the program is closed.



    The only source of confusion would be what happens to an app when you hit the home button? Does it close or remain open? This could be mitigated in many ways. There could be a first run dialog box asking what you want the app to do when you hit the home button with instructions to access the setting if you want to change the default behavior at a later date. You could get a popup when you hit the home button to exit the app that says the app is still running in the background, or a box asking the user if they wanted to close the app or run it in the background, possibly with the option to set a default behavior. Or Apple could introduce two distinct ways to "close" an app. One would close it, the other would set it to run in the background. I don't think the hurdles are as great as you seem to think they are. Apple could definitely come up with an intuitive system.
  • Reply 85 of 293
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chronster View Post


    The next time someone bitches about the ipad or iphone missing something, don't try to come up with some bogus excuse for why it's not there. You're not fooling anyone.



    Yeah, like a file system.
  • Reply 86 of 293
    Sorry, maybe I'm not paying close enough attention, but where did they get this information?
  • Reply 87 of 293
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cmf2 View Post


    The only source of confusion would be what happens to an app when you hit the home button? Does it close or remain open?



    This could be taken care of with a different gesture to close the app. For instance, dragging two fingers from one corner to another might put it in the background.



    Although if they did that, people might not like it since they're just so used to hitting the home button.



    We'll see what the geniuses at Apple come up with. I have a feeling it'll be a setting in the preferences that determines how the home button acts.
  • Reply 88 of 293
    There are a lot of misleading things in this article. Of course, none of you seem to have noticed them, all they do is feed fuel to your fire.



    Quote:

    Other platforms that do support the launching of multiple apps, including Android and Windows Mobile, require users to manually manage system resources and kill off performance robbing background tasks.



    FALSE. Android absolutely does NOT require you to "manually manage system resources". Sure, you have the option to do that if you're an insane OCD'er, but Android is smart enough to kill off background resources as it deems necessary. I have never once had to manually quit an application, it's all done automatically.



    Quote:

    the user interface will resemble Apple's desktop Expose feature, in that a key combination -- reportedly hitting the Home button twice -- will trigger an expose-like interface that brings up a series of icons representing the currently running apps, allowing users to quickly select the one they want to switch to directly.



    Hmm... that sounds familiar. Where have I seen this before in a mobile platform? Ah yes, that's right... Android.



    The key combo is different (hold down home instead of tapping it twice) but this is the exact same interface that Android uses to quickly switch between running apps.



    Comparing it to Expose is to presume that it's some kind of amazing Apple invention. It's nothing like Expose, which is in fact a very cool method for managing apps on your desktop computer. But showing you a group of icons that represent your running applications? That's not Expose. Apple is borrowing this interface directly from Android.



    Look, Android has clearly borrowed a lot from iPhone OS - but Apple fan boys can never admit to when Apple borrows from other people. This is one of those cases. You have to admit it or you are simply lying to yourself.



    Quote:

    ...the ability to add individual contacts to the iPhone's home screen, such as a button that will call "Mom" or "Dad" directly.



    Again, another feature borrowed from Android.



    Quote:

    Other platform vendors do not mandate rigid security for their software libraries, with Android permissively allowing users to install apps from any source, something that will likely serve as a welcome mat for malicious hackers once that platform gains enough visibility.



    Nice spin. First off, to install non-market apps, you have to go find a deeply-buried system preference to enable this feature. And it explicitly warns you to the dangers of enabling that feature.



    Second, sure this could be exploited - but what it's really about is allowing people to develop any software they want for the platform without having to rely on Google's approval to be put in the market place.



    You've all read the horror stories of iPhone developers being shunned by Apple and having no recourse, right? With Android, that's no big deal. You don't have to put your app in the official market at all. You can put it on your web site and anyone in the world can download and install it. That's powerful.



    Ya know, just like you do with your desktop computer. You're presumably smart enough not to download and install software from sources you don't trust. Imagine if on your iMac or Macbook Pro, you could only download and install apps that Apple itself has "approved" - pretty ridiculous right? Well that's what Apple does with the iPhone, and I don't see how anyone could possibly deem that acceptable.



    Android is an open platform, that's one of its big strengths. You can install anything you want on it. Can't say the same thing for the iPhone because you can only install stuff from the App store that Apple has approved. But somehow Apple fans see this as a good thing? Right....



    Quote:

    Google provides no standard mechanism for system-wide push on Android...



    This is true. I'll give you guys that one. Apple's global push system is pretty slick and well done. But the actual notification system itself (modal popup boxes that block the rest of the OS until you acknowledge the notification box) are vastly inferior to Android's notification system, which simply puts incoming notificatons in the menu bar for you to react to when you feel like it. Much better as they stay out of your way and you can deal with them when you feel like it. It's also nice because you can use it as a reminder to respond to something later, since it will stay there until you dismiss it.
  • Reply 89 of 293
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chronster View Post


    Now all of a sudden multi-tasking is cool, isn't it guys?



    It's so funny how these things (like copy and paste) are looked at with great disdain up until Apple actually implements it.



    From here on out: Stop making excuses for why Apple has left something out. Start thinking for yourself. Artificial limitations require no excuse other than the fact that development hasn't reached that point yet.



    The next time someone bitches about the ipad or iphone missing something, don't try to come up with some bogus excuse for why it's not there. You're not fooling anyone.



    These were never looked at with disdain, only the people caliming that Apple is teh doomed? and all the other nonsense reasons why Apple is evil because they choose to get it right over poor implementations like copy/paste in Android, Cycorder for jailbroken iPhones, and unencumbered multitasking on early iPhones. Those are all still poor for various reasons. It was never an all or nothing argument with any of these features and they were ALL expected to come eventually.
  • Reply 90 of 293
    gqbgqb Posts: 1,934member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson View Post


    ...was complaining that when she'd been looking at her Yelp app, if she clicked to view the map, it automatically launched Maps, but that she had to re-start the Yelp app again to go back to it, so I guess non-techy users do want something along these lines as well.



    I think the problem is that there's no reason Yelp needs to actually keep running. It does need to maintain its state, but that seems like a programming issue, not a need for pre-emptive multitasking.

    I don't know if all apps are able to save state, but I know that many do.
  • Reply 91 of 293
    successsuccess Posts: 1,040member
    Idiots
  • Reply 92 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by masternav View Post




    Resource management in Android is based around "garbage collection" not application pre-emptive memory demand as you seemed to state above. As such the garbage collection function will create overhead in addition to whatever other apps you are running as well. Applications "sitting in memory" while not requiring huge amounts of cpu cycles, still require state checks and garbage collection checks or blocks, depending on whether they enjoy persistent or temporary states - which still uses the odd cpu cycle - run enough of those and you see cpu utilization that can impact performance.




    Ahh.... that is good to know. So an Android developer gets some built-in assistance for the memory management, but it comes at a price.



    Does Android allow manual deallocation of memory?



    *
  • Reply 93 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chronster View Post


    Now all of a sudden multi-tasking is cool, isn't it guys?



    It's so funny how these things (like copy and paste) are looked at with great disdain up until Apple actually implements it.



    From here on out: Stop making excuses for why Apple has left something out. Start thinking for yourself. Artificial limitations require no excuse other than the fact that development hasn't reached that point yet.



    The next time someone bitches about the ipad or iphone missing something, don't try to come up with some bogus excuse for why it's not there. You're not fooling anyone.



    What bogus excuses??



    The excuses for not having copy/paste since the beginning were valid. The same goes for the reasons for still not having "real" multitasking. And those excuses were just what you said: development hadn't reached that point yet for the quality implementation that customers expect. Simply put, it's not easy, and it'll only be there once it's great.
  • Reply 94 of 293
    ihxoihxo Posts: 567member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Look, just go to a doctor for a prostate exam. It's not fun but it's necessary.



    I said dark places, not THOSE places...
  • Reply 95 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sdfisher View Post


    So that's 1 vote for it working well. As opposed to about 200 votes I've read for it being terrible.



    Here's another vote. Android's multitasking works great. I don't know where these other 200 votes are you speak of, but my guess is they're all from iPhone users who have never touched an Android device.
  • Reply 96 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by masternav View Post


    Why do you insist on making inaccurate comparisons between a mobile device and a desktop computing system? And why is anyone else with a valid viewpoint categorically a "sheep" or an "idiot" by disagreeing with you?



    How are they inaccurate comparisons? I'm not arguing anything specs-wise, I'm arguing on an ideological stand point. The maker of the device that *I* own shouldn't arbitrarily tell me what I can and cannot do with it.



    What's a valid argument for a closed eco-system app system (besides improved profits)? That's what I was arguing against and calling a sheep, NOT "anyone else with a valid viewpoint."



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by masternav View Post


    The critical aspect here is as much memory management as power management, depending on the device of course. You don't need to quit out of other apps (depending on your equipment and the apps if you are running Logic because MacOSX does a decent job of memory management, and on the desktop you have few if any of the battery management concerns that are part of the mobile device use paradigm.



    I love OSX as much as the next person, but I have 4GB RAM and can barely leave Safari open when using Logic 9 with a decent amount of tracks and software instruments. I'm not complaining about it, because I understand Logic is very resource-intensive, but it's worth stating.



    Also, Mac laptops are much more prevalent than desktops these days (sales numbers can back that up). So battery management is very much a concern in the OSX environment.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by masternav View Post


    Resource management in Android is based around "garbage collection" not application pre-emptive memory demand as you seemed to state above. As such the garbage collection function will create overhead in addition to whatever other apps you are running as well. Applications "sitting in memory" while not requiring huge amounts of cpu cycles, still require state checks and garbage collection checks or blocks, depending on whether they enjoy persistent or temporary states - which still uses the odd cpu cycle - run enough of those and you see cpu utilization that can impact performance.



    I think there's a large difference between in-theory and real life. Is it "good" to leave an unused app sitting in memory for a long time? Not really, but the difference really is negligible in everyday use. In my experience, Android will have killed off the app by the next time I check the task manager (once every few hours).



    Also, you forget to mention the battery drain associated with launching and relaunching the same apps over and over again. This is a much bigger drain then letting the app sit in memory, and a large reason why uneducated task-killing Android users experience worse battery life.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by masternav View Post


    Somehow you have lost sight of these very basic facts in your commentary and reached out with your hearty "sheep" and "idiot" invitations to support logical and ernest discussion. Very Nice.



    Please see above. I addressing a specific contingent of users who support a closed eco-system for apps, not anyone who argues against the other things I mentioned. My specific statement: "Anyone who advocates for a closed-ecosystem app store is either an Apple shareholder/sheep or an idiot."



    Way to generalize there, buddy.
  • Reply 97 of 293
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cmf2 View Post


    People get consfused with OSX because clicking "x" does not close the program (most of the time). That would not be the case in iPhone OS. Safari has already shown how the Expose portion would work (although it sounds like we will be dealing with icons not images of the app). You would simply activate expose and an "x" would appear in the top left corner of each icon. Click the "x" and the program is closed.



    I would imagine an App could have several files open at the same time as well. For example in text editing one might want to copy and paste several different phrases from one document to another. Rather than copying everything and then deleting what you don't need, it would be much simpler to have both documents open at once.



    Point is, once multi-tasking is available in the OS, Apps might want to implement an internal scheme to manage multiple instances of itself like Safari. The OS wide multi manager feature might also be able to display multi level icons for an individual App.
  • Reply 98 of 293
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    Yeah, like a file system.



    Maybe it's in the works lol

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sausage&Onion View Post


    Sorry, maybe I'm not paying close enough attention, but where did they get this information?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Those familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 said that the user interface will resemble Apple's desktop Expose feature



    ^could be complete bs though :/



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    These were never looked at with disdain, only the people caliming that Apple is teh doomed? and all the other nonsense reasons why Apple is evil because they choose to get it right over poor implementations like copy/paste in Android, Cycorder for jailbroken iPhones, and unencumbered multitasking on early iPhones. Those are all still poor for various reasons. It was never an all or nothing argument with any of these features and they were ALL expected to come eventually.



    I've had a lot of people that pull excuse after excuse as to why something like copy and paste or MMS wasn't implemented. Statements like "it's not needed" tend to lead me to believe that people accepted it wasn't there and would never be there.



    The fact is, the iphone OS has only been out a few years. The things people shrug off and try to say will never happen might very well happen. I'm sure OSX wasn't as great as it is right out of the gate.



    It's just funny to listen to people sort of come up with reasons as to why the phone is the best thing ever, and whatever it's lacking was nonsense anyways.
  • Reply 99 of 293
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by spliff monkey View Post


    You had to know it was coming. Apple's multi-tasking UI is going to kick the crap out of everything else. I can't wait for the ipad to get this as well. Does anyone think the ipad version of the OS will be on a different development cycle or might get these features later? Can't wait to see that new "A4" iphone as well. (upgrade time!)



    uh, yeah really?



    Considering Nokia's N900 had a full Expose style interface for task switching already last year... and it is fully animated, hardware accelerated with live minature images of each running app including playing videos.
  • Reply 100 of 293
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleSwitcher View Post


    What bogus excuses??



    The excuses for not having copy/paste since the beginning were valid. The same goes for the reasons for still not having "real" multitasking. And those excuses were just what you said: development hadn't reached that point yet for the quality implementation that customers expect. Simply put, it's not easy, and it'll only be there once it's great.



    That might have been your excuse, but even on youtube I heard a lot of the same thing, which was people trying to make excuses for a scenario where the device would never have the feature.
Sign In or Register to comment.