So, reading between the lines re multitasking, some guesses on how it will be implemented:
1. I think for most apps what they've added is more akin to suspending than multitasking. The OS saves the entire state of the app, and then swaps it back in to RAM when the user wants to switch back.
2. In addition, there will be specific services via some published APIs that can actually get some CPU time. Background music, push notifications, location change callbacks, network streaming (like the photo upload example they gave) and ???. I doubt you will be able to design your app to truly continue running in the background, calculating pi or whatever.
I think that's correct, and I think it's the smart way to do it. Apple has addressed 99% of the use cases to do what people want, rather than just let apps run in the background just to be doing it.
From the complaints I've read, Pandora alone is a huge part of what was bugging people, the other is IM and Twitter clients which, while not explicitly addressed, have come up in the Q & A-- devs are being told that the state saving (what they're calling "fast app switching") is deeper than what they went into in the presentation, so that may have been improved without explicitly exposing specific APIs.
I'm also quite intrigued by another little exchange in the Q&A: Steve was asked about the home screen info opportunities on the iPad, and he kind of punted-- said that they released the iPad on Saturday, and rested on Sunday. The Ars transcription has a follow-up question for which they say Steve gives a "non-answer answer."
So possibly some further developments on the home screen front? That and notifications (which could be the same thing) were about the only unmet wants, AFAIK.
... at some point, you have to realize that they're just having us bend over for them.
Not being able to run the latest software on a three year old computer in a fast evolving market is really nothing like "having us bend over for them." You exaggerate rather strongly here I think and are basically over-reacting like most people do on the day of the announcement.
I predict that like many people in your situation, you will not get rid of your iPhone because of this and a few months from now will go back to waffling on about how great Apple is again.
People really seem to enjoy over-reacting about their pet problems and desires on the day of the event but what I'd like to see is some intelligent comment about the whole thing and what it says about the future of the platform.
For instance one giant elephant that wasn't in the room with Jobs today was any information on the purported solution to document creation on these devices, to wit: a documents folder or minimal file system accessible by other apps, computers, etc. This was specifically and strongly hinted at by Jobs himself in the past, but doesn't apparently exist at all in iPhone OS 4.0
Posts about "why didn't they ... <do my favourite thing> <include my favourite app/desire> are pretty useless in general.
How is a banner ad at the bottom of the screen taking up your time?
It happens when the ad is cunningly placed near a screen region I need to tap to do something legit, and I wind up inadvertently tapping the ad, whisking me away from whatever I was doing. Very annoying. It's happened to me several times already. It will certainly teach me to be more accurate in the future!
Memory had nothing to do with lack of MMS in the original iPhone... it was the cell radio used that prevented it from being possible, so it was a hardware issue.
RAM is hardware.
It's funny how jailbroken phones can do all the things are "impossible"
I've been complaining about no multi-tasking for ages, but have been assured my pals at the Apple Store that "it's coming." And when it does, it doesn't even support an iPhone model that they are CURRENTLY SELLING.
Do they really still sell iPhone 3G (without the s)? The 3G is as slow as the original iPhone. Time to move on... or haven't you made any money yet on their soaring stock?
Gaming API that allows for touch controls on screen that can be instantly linked to a HW D-pad accessory. Making it easy for developers to make this virtual to physical connection via the 30-pin connector without having to build for a specific HW vendor making the D-Pad. This would open up the gaming accessory market by standardizing the developers efforts while making it simple to do. It would also help bring more and better games to the platform and hardcore mobile gamers wouldn?t feel be afraid that they?d have to buy multiple HW D-pads for different game vendors.
Lockscreen that allows for Widgets, like weather, stocks, rich notifications, whatever.
Allow for default page when entering iPhone to show running widgets (or mini-apps) instead of the top 16 apps (only showing bottom row apps).
New Homepage Widget API so that devs can sell really cool Widgets on the App Store.
Detailed history of ALL notifications, making it searchable and accessible nearly everywhere you are in the system.
Ability to search pages in Safari.
Smart Folders on Home Screen. (some potential Smart Folder categories are Recently Added apps, Apps used more than x-days ago, Games folder)
I'd like the OS to send app usage data to iTunes so you can see which apps you haven't used or used least so you can clean out the "forgotten apps".
Smart mailboxes & mail rules in Mail
Fix the way Find My iPhone is turned on and off on the iPhone so if someone is in your phone they need the MobileMe password or phone PIN to disable FindMyIPhone.
Universal voice-to-text
Ability to remove (hide) some of Apple?s default apps from the Home Screen, then only appearing in Settings
Option to edit of content in iPod app (like you can do with the iPad's iPod app)
Allow developers to offer trial periods of apps (They already offer exploding media in the movie rentals so the technology is already there)
Also in the Q&A: there was a "what about improvements to the App Store" question and they noted that the App Store isn't the OS- that it's server side and can be updated at any time. Sounds like there might be something going on there, as well. My guess would be to coincide with the new hardware release, just to give it a little more pop.
What a complete JOKE. I have been a loyal apple'ist for ages... but this is the final straw. SCREW IT
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazda 3s
Oh give me a break. The iPhone 3G has half the RAM as the 3GS if I recall correctly. Multitasking would likely CHOKE!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaHarder
Well... Sometimes to move technology forward, some things (e.g. less capable devices) have to be left behind.
It's not like the iPhone 2g/3g is going to lose any of its current functionality, and if these new 'features' had not been announced, there'd be little/no complaint anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob55
Well if you've got all that stuff, what's another couple hundred for a new 3GS or whatever might be coming this summer from them. The 3G will be 2 years old this summer and in mobile phone terms, that's quite old.
Kind of like how the oldest of old Android phones will probably not get the 2.x update. The hardware is too outdated to run the latest update at any reasonable speed. (Looking at you melgross)
DaHarder said it best. To move forward, technology must leave the very old behind.
Do you still have a 2G? If you do, then wouldn't now be about time you can get your 2-year upgrade?
I don't believe I said a word about anyone's dietary habits. If the developer can find no better way to monetize his app, it was probably not worth the download. In fact, I've already deleted several 'free' apps from this shiny little iPad because they were nothing much more than ad trojans. As the end user, my job is to pay for apps that do a job for me - not to be tricked into paying for crap.
It's funny how jailbroken phones can do all the things are "impossible"
As the former user of several 'jailbroken' iPhones, I can say with certainty that there's a hefty price to be paid in the form of battery autonomy for using some of those added (jailbreak) features.
The battery life on the iPhone is already somewhat lackluster, so for the average user less would be completely unacceptable.
Apple may be slow to implement features like MMS/multi-tasking/etc, but I have to give them credit for at least thinking things through before they do add certain capabilities.
Not being able to run the latest software on a three year old computer in a fast evolving market is really nothing like "having us bend over for them." You exaggerate rather strongly here I think and are basically over-reacting like most people do on the day of the announcement.
I predict that like many people in your situation, you will not get rid of your iPhone because of this and a few months from now will go back to waffling on about how great Apple is again.
People really seem to enjoy over-reacting about their pet problems and desires on the day of the event but what I'd like to see is some intelligent comment about the whole thing and what it says about the future of the platform.
For instance one giant elephant that wasn't in the room with Jobs today was any information on the purported solution to document creation on these devices, to wit: a documents folder or minimal file system accessible by other apps, computers, etc. This was specifically and strongly hinted at by Jobs himself in the past, but doesn't apparently exist at all in iPhone OS 4.0
Posts about "why didn't they ... <do my favourite thing> <include my favourite app/desire> are pretty useless in general.
They still sell the iPhone 3G on their website TODAY. If it's such a dusty old POS, then quit selling it, instead of selling it to the masses and limiting, via your software, what the device can and cannot do.
It sounds like they've done a great job here. They've done something very targeted and balanced. Instead of letting background apps go hog wild, they are giving developers just what they need and nothing more. This is smart. And I just hope the app review process dings developers who misuse these features. Remember developers -- it's not about you. It's about me (the consumer).
Gaming API that allows for touch controls on screen that can be instantly linked to a HW D-pad accessory. Making it easy for developers to make this virtual to physical connection via the 30-pin connector without having to build for a specific HW vendor making the D-Pad. This would open up the gaming accessory market by standardizing the developers efforts while making it simple to do. It would also help bring more and better games to the platform and hardcore mobile gamers wouldn?t feel be afraid that they?d have to buy multiple HW D-pads for different game vendors.
Lockscreen that allows for Widgets, like weather, stocks, rich notifications, whatever.
Allow for default page when entering iPhone to show running widgets (or mini-apps) instead of the top 16 apps (only showing bottom row apps).
New Homepage Widget API so that devs can sell really cool Widgets on the App Store.
Detailed history of ALL notifications, making it searchable and accessible nearly everywhere you are in the system.
Ability to search pages in Safari.
Smart Folders on Home Screen. (some potential Smart Folder categories are Recently Added apps, Apps used more than x-days ago, Games folder)
I'd like the OS to send app usage data to iTunes so you can see which apps you haven't used or used least so you can clean out the "forgotten apps".
Smart mailboxes & mail rules in Mail
Fix the way Find My iPhone is turned on and off on the iPhone so if someone is in your phone they need the MobileMe password or phone PIN to disable FindMyIPhone.
Universal voice-to-text
Ability to remove (hide) some of Apple?s default apps from the Home Screen, then only appearing in Settings
Option to edit of content in iPod app (like you can do with the iPad's iPod app)
Allow developers to offer trial periods of apps (They already offer exploding media in the movie rentals so the technology is already there)
Disk Mode
2-5 are the main things in my mind, and I can imagine an implementation where they're all pretty much the same thing. As I mentioned, Steve's vagueness on that count in the Q&A gives me a little hope that they still have something in mind that isn't ready. Typically if they don't think it's something they want to do, they're pretty assertive about it-- you know, "We think we've got a great notification system that really works for people, best of breed", that sort of thing.
I've been complaining about no multi-tasking for ages, but have been assured my pals at the Apple Store that "it's coming." And when it does, it doesn't even support an iPhone model that they are CURRENTLY SELLING.
Ummmm ... the iPhone 3GS is compatible with all the features in the 4.0 OS ... I'm pretty sure Apple is CURRENTLY (captials for extra emphasis) selling them (because I've had one for well over eight months).
I can understand you're upset (for some reason), but please spare us your false diachotomies and melodrama ...
128MB in the 3G model, 256MB in the 3GS. The 3G already gets slowdowns and Safari page refreshes just from having iPod running and other switching between apps.
I always get my wife's cast off iPhones as her needs are greater as a Realtor. Her MK 1 now my touch and at present her old 3G is my main phone. So the next question I have is ... how long before there is a new model I can get her to thus inherit the 3Gs?
Comments
I'm not sure about you, son, but my time is worth money. I get irritated when people steal it.
How is a banner ad at the bottom of the screen taking up your time?
So, reading between the lines re multitasking, some guesses on how it will be implemented:
1. I think for most apps what they've added is more akin to suspending than multitasking. The OS saves the entire state of the app, and then swaps it back in to RAM when the user wants to switch back.
2. In addition, there will be specific services via some published APIs that can actually get some CPU time. Background music, push notifications, location change callbacks, network streaming (like the photo upload example they gave) and ???. I doubt you will be able to design your app to truly continue running in the background, calculating pi or whatever.
I think that's correct, and I think it's the smart way to do it. Apple has addressed 99% of the use cases to do what people want, rather than just let apps run in the background just to be doing it.
From the complaints I've read, Pandora alone is a huge part of what was bugging people, the other is IM and Twitter clients which, while not explicitly addressed, have come up in the Q & A-- devs are being told that the state saving (what they're calling "fast app switching") is deeper than what they went into in the presentation, so that may have been improved without explicitly exposing specific APIs.
I'm also quite intrigued by another little exchange in the Q&A: Steve was asked about the home screen info opportunities on the iPad, and he kind of punted-- said that they released the iPad on Saturday, and rested on Sunday. The Ars transcription has a follow-up question for which they say Steve gives a "non-answer answer."
So possibly some further developments on the home screen front? That and notifications (which could be the same thing) were about the only unmet wants, AFAIK.
... at some point, you have to realize that they're just having us bend over for them.
Not being able to run the latest software on a three year old computer in a fast evolving market is really nothing like "having us bend over for them." You exaggerate rather strongly here I think and are basically over-reacting like most people do on the day of the announcement.
I predict that like many people in your situation, you will not get rid of your iPhone because of this and a few months from now will go back to waffling on about how great Apple is again.
People really seem to enjoy over-reacting about their pet problems and desires on the day of the event but what I'd like to see is some intelligent comment about the whole thing and what it says about the future of the platform.
For instance one giant elephant that wasn't in the room with Jobs today was any information on the purported solution to document creation on these devices, to wit: a documents folder or minimal file system accessible by other apps, computers, etc. This was specifically and strongly hinted at by Jobs himself in the past, but doesn't apparently exist at all in iPhone OS 4.0
Posts about "why didn't they ... <do my favourite thing> <include my favourite app/desire> are pretty useless in general.
i'm not sure about you, son, but my time is worth money. I get irritated when people steal it.
How is a banner ad at the bottom of the screen taking up your time?
It happens when the ad is cunningly placed near a screen region I need to tap to do something legit, and I wind up inadvertently tapping the ad, whisking me away from whatever I was doing. Very annoying. It's happened to me several times already. It will certainly teach me to be more accurate in the future!
Memory had nothing to do with lack of MMS in the original iPhone... it was the cell radio used that prevented it from being possible, so it was a hardware issue.
RAM is hardware.
It's funny how jailbroken phones can do all the things are "impossible"
#3:
I've been complaining about no multi-tasking for ages, but have been assured my pals at the Apple Store that "it's coming." And when it does, it doesn't even support an iPhone model that they are CURRENTLY SELLING.
Do they really still sell iPhone 3G (without the s)? The 3G is as slow as the original iPhone. Time to move on... or haven't you made any money yet on their soaring stock?
RAM is hardware.
It's funny how jailbroken phones can do all the things are "impossible"
There you go... so, why are you complaining then?
What a complete JOKE. I have been a loyal apple'ist for ages... but this is the final straw. SCREW IT
Oh give me a break. The iPhone 3G has half the RAM as the 3GS if I recall correctly. Multitasking would likely CHOKE!
Well... Sometimes to move technology forward, some things (e.g. less capable devices) have to be left behind.
It's not like the iPhone 2g/3g is going to lose any of its current functionality, and if these new 'features' had not been announced, there'd be little/no complaint anyway.
Well if you've got all that stuff, what's another couple hundred for a new 3GS or whatever might be coming this summer from them. The 3G will be 2 years old this summer and in mobile phone terms, that's quite old.
Kind of like how the oldest of old Android phones will probably not get the 2.x update. The hardware is too outdated to run the latest update at any reasonable speed. (Looking at you melgross)
DaHarder said it best. To move forward, technology must leave the very old behind.
Do you still have a 2G? If you do, then wouldn't now be about time you can get your 2-year upgrade?
I don't believe I said a word about anyone's dietary habits. If the developer can find no better way to monetize his app, it was probably not worth the download. In fact, I've already deleted several 'free' apps from this shiny little iPad because they were nothing much more than ad trojans. As the end user, my job is to pay for apps that do a job for me - not to be tricked into paying for crap.
Here is a link explaining a metaphor. Sorry to confuse you
RAM is hardware.
It's funny how jailbroken phones can do all the things are "impossible"
As the former user of several 'jailbroken' iPhones, I can say with certainty that there's a hefty price to be paid in the form of battery autonomy for using some of those added (jailbreak) features.
The battery life on the iPhone is already somewhat lackluster, so for the average user less would be completely unacceptable.
Apple may be slow to implement features like MMS/multi-tasking/etc, but I have to give them credit for at least thinking things through before they do add certain capabilities.
Not being able to run the latest software on a three year old computer in a fast evolving market is really nothing like "having us bend over for them." You exaggerate rather strongly here I think and are basically over-reacting like most people do on the day of the announcement.
I predict that like many people in your situation, you will not get rid of your iPhone because of this and a few months from now will go back to waffling on about how great Apple is again.
People really seem to enjoy over-reacting about their pet problems and desires on the day of the event but what I'd like to see is some intelligent comment about the whole thing and what it says about the future of the platform.
For instance one giant elephant that wasn't in the room with Jobs today was any information on the purported solution to document creation on these devices, to wit: a documents folder or minimal file system accessible by other apps, computers, etc. This was specifically and strongly hinted at by Jobs himself in the past, but doesn't apparently exist at all in iPhone OS 4.0
Posts about "why didn't they ... <do my favourite thing> <include my favourite app/desire> are pretty useless in general.
They still sell the iPhone 3G on their website TODAY. If it's such a dusty old POS, then quit selling it, instead of selling it to the masses and limiting, via your software, what the device can and cannot do.
There you go... so, why are you complaining then?
Because I don't want to void my warranty.
Things I didn't see, but wanted to see...
2-5 are the main things in my mind, and I can imagine an implementation where they're all pretty much the same thing. As I mentioned, Steve's vagueness on that count in the Q&A gives me a little hope that they still have something in mind that isn't ready. Typically if they don't think it's something they want to do, they're pretty assertive about it-- you know, "We think we've got a great notification system that really works for people, best of breed", that sort of thing.
#3:
I've been complaining about no multi-tasking for ages, but have been assured my pals at the Apple Store that "it's coming." And when it does, it doesn't even support an iPhone model that they are CURRENTLY SELLING.
Ummmm ... the iPhone 3GS is compatible with all the features in the 4.0 OS ... I'm pretty sure Apple is CURRENTLY (captials for extra emphasis) selling them (because I've had one for well over eight months).
I can understand you're upset (for some reason), but please spare us your false diachotomies and melodrama ...
Here is a link explaining a metaphor. Sorry to confuse you
Well argued. Really bolsters your point.
128MB in the 3G model, 256MB in the 3GS. The 3G already gets slowdowns and Safari page refreshes just from having iPod running and other switching between apps.
I always get my wife's cast off iPhones as her needs are greater as a Realtor. Her MK 1 now my touch and at present her old 3G is my main phone. So the next question I have is ... how long before there is a new model I can get her to thus inherit the 3Gs?