The restart advice is fine. The closing apps advice is voodoo, for the most part: there are situations in which you might need to close a single app that's become unresponsive (which is what Apple is talking about in the page you link to), but advising people to close all apps in their multitasking menu to improve performance is wrong due to the way iOS manages system resources. For a detailed explanation of why, see here and here.
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4S performance degradation?
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The restart advice is fine. The closing apps advice is voodoo, for the most part: there are situations in which you might need to close a single app that's become unresponsive (which is what Apple is talking about in the page you link to), but advising people to close all apps in their multitasking menu to improve performance is wrong due to the way iOS manages system resources. For a detailed explanation of why, see here and here.
Thank you! I thought we were done with this "close all apps" stuff... It's been thoroughly debunked several times.
Neither in those links or Apple's Programming Guide is a connection made between a low-memory condition and poor performance. Meaning, application performance can be impacted by lack of memory before iOS purges suspended apps to preserve the stability of the OS at that low-memory condition.
Saying it serves no purpose is in conflict with apps that don't launch and the developers recommend restarting the phone (I usually just close all the recently used apps and that's enough).
From direct observation, when I pick up the daughter's iPod and it lags terribly, there are 30+ items in the recently used application list. Closing all of them resolves the issue. Some were probably purged. Maybe I didn't give the active app time to transition from background to suspended state. Who knows?
When I took my phone to a Genius for poor video performance he showed me I had low app memory and made the recommendation to me to close 'em. Geniuses can be hit or miss but it resolved my video stuttering.
I don't want to argue this, but I do it and recommend it because for me (and from other posts) there is experience that it works and I don't see Apple giving information to the contrary. And even if it does nothing from a technical perspective, it allows apps to launch and to me they run better so maybe all I needed was placebo and a pat on the head.
There is no doubt low memory can and does impact iOS performance. As good as iOS is it is certainly not perfect at memory management. Heck there are times apps will not even open in low memory situations (I'm talking to you iPad 1).Neither in those links or Apple's Programming Guide is a connection made between a low-memory condition and poor performance. Meaning, application performance can be impacted by lack of memory before iOS purges suspended apps to preserve the stability of the OS at that low-memory condition.
Saying it serves no purpose is in conflict with apps that don't launch and the developers recommend restarting the phone (I usually just close all the recently used apps and that's enough).
From direct observation, when I pick up the daughter's iPod and it lags terribly, there are 30+ items in the recently used application list. Closing all of them resolves the issue. Some were probably purged. Maybe I didn't give the active app time to transition from background to suspended state. Who knows?
When I took my phone to a Genius for poor video performance he showed me I had low app memory and made the recommendation to me to close 'em. Geniuses can be hit or miss but it resolved my video stuttering.
I don't want to argue this, but I do it and recommend it because for me (and from other posts) there is experience that it works and I don't see Apple giving information to the contrary. And even if it does nothing from a technical perspective, it allows apps to launch and to me they run better so maybe all I needed was placebo and a pat on the head.
But manually closing apps is a pain--and I personally like my most used apps to be readily available in the switcher. So a simple reboot does it all for me. I do it probably every other day or so. Now that I am jailbroken on my 4S I just tell siri to reboot and it is done. (No more turning iPhone off only to forget to turn it back on--ugh.)
My comments about closing apps and rebooting were more about it being basic advise that most anyone that has been a member here for 3+ years would already know. I think he was looking for some tips beyond that (e.g., "clearing out old SMS conversations helped me").
Michael