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Apple Announces Multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0
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I disagree. Check out Apple's 4.0 page and scroll down to "iPhone OS 4 Compatibility". It's pretty clear that 2G is deliberately left out.
As a 2G iPhoner myself, I was planning on getting a 3G iPad and keeping my iPhone as, well, a phone. I'll still have apps on the phone, but I don't need multitasking on the phone. I wonder how many apps will be 4.0 only from now on though, which will increasingly relegate me to be some kind of app store backwater.
Exactly!! I said that a couple days ago. This way they can make calls and be using data at the same time, because they will both be over the data network. That is a perfect workaround. Why wouldn't this work? Especially since now that the unlimited data/voice plans are getting so cheap, they can just offer a data plan only.
I basically already do this. I have a MIFI hotspot with verizon. I cancelled my service with ATT, so now I use Skype on my iphone along with my MiFi hotspot and I've got phone calls with my iphone on Verizon and a hotspot for my laptop.
Exactly.
The "answer" now that people can't say the word "Pandora" is going to be "Instant Messaging". Other than that, for all *practical* purposes, their IS no difference between the two.
Demo Video:
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... but it still doesn't explain how you retain an App open or if the OS just keeps an App open based on context. i.e. If music in Pandora is left playing and you hit Home, Pandora will put itself in the multitasking tray to keep it running music in the background.
... but it still doesn't explain how you retain an App open or if the OS just keeps an App open based on context. i.e. If music in Pandora is left playing and you hit Home, Pandora will put itself in the multitasking tray to keep it running music in the background.
Thanks!
(Looks like they redesigned the Calculator icon so it wouldn’t look too much like a folder of icons.)
IF by mean context switching and having the whole app run in the background while another app runs in the for ground they yes I would agree. However one would ask, do you need the entire app to run or do you want pieces running? Do you think this will matter to the end user?
I am asking.
10 - 11 hours is TERRIBLE. Even on my nearly 2 year old 3G I can go at least 2 days without a charge. And that's with quite a bit of App usage as well as a few hours of talk. If I had to charge _twice_ a day.... I'd be looking for a new phone!
Often I'll go about two and half days between charges. Two days of usage... then let it charge at my desk at work. If I'm not actively using Apps I can go 3 days or so...
I wonder if Backgrounder's improved over the last year then. When I had a jailbroken 3G last spring audio streams would eventually crash most of the time. Pocket Tunes was the most reliable IIRC. My forced 3GS upgrade was a blessing in disguise. I can't totally blame Steve for this decision based on my past experience (and if you look at my past posts you'll know I'm far from thinking Apple does no wrong). It really sucks for those off-cycle not upgrade eligible though.
No. It looks like the iPad is going to get a software upgrade. Not a hardware refresh. Now way Apple ramped up the production for the iPad just to scrap it 6 months later. It is an OS update the same way the OS 4.0 is an update for the 3GS phones bought last year or any incremental point update (patches etc) would get for phone deployed.
The hardware upgrade cycle for Phones and Touches has been a about a year. If the iPad follows the same pattern it will also be a year.
In a perfect world they could have skipped iPhone 3.2 and released the iPad with 4.0. There are too many parts to line up here phone (3 versions) , touch (2-3 versions) , ipad , and new OS APIs ( new apps like iBooks ). to get everything to come out at the same time. So ship stop gap 3.2 with a subset of 4.0 features and then get the 4.0 for iPad out when have had time to throughly QA it after finishing QA on iPhone and Touch.
Next year's iPad will likely get some kind of 4.x release on the 4.0 baseline for the new hardware. then late fall again get 5.0 [ that's why the license is quirky to give you the next "x+1" release. ]
You might want to double-check your information before lecturing about comprehension. Steve posed this as a hypothetical situation to put a number on ad opportunities. I haven't dug too deeply into the new SDK, but it looks like devs have full control over when ads are presented. If you think the dev is abusing the ads, complain. If they offer an ad-free version, buy that. Theoretically, devs could even show one ad when the app is first launched then disable the ad space afterward. Disabling ads could probably even be an in-app update.
Bottom line: devs need to be compensated for their work for updates to be financially viable. Personally, I'm looking forward to using iAd (conservatively) to make a couple apps profitable again so I can spend more time on them.
Note: This service is an opportunity to developers and the feature alone has no impact on users directly. Devs can use or ignore iAd based on customer feedback.
Another note: why is everyone who agrees with Apple a fanboy?
Luke
I haven't looked API docs so this is just a guess (don't really want to look because then cannot comment since it is beta) but it can be quite straightforward.
Remember this all has to be done through an API. If your app makes no multitasking API calls then it likely will just get shut down. if your app makes an multitasking API call then the OS will likely keep that information passed around so that if looks like could close app it will stop and say "Oh no, foo app told me it was playing music... I let it go on at a lower task level for now". When the app is done playing the music or whatever then make another multitasking API call saying "done" or a call saying "fast switch me to sleep" ( which looks like could be as simple as just paging out the app to disk and not waking it up till prompted. )
In short, it is almost cooperative multitasking. Welcome to Mac OS circa 1980-90s. If you app doesn't "cooperate" with the OS it probably will not multitask. It is relatively easy to overlay that onto a preemptive multitasking OS like OS X .
In the Q&A they poo-poo users having to explicitly use a task manager. There is good chance there still is a task manager of sorts (in a sense already was since apps had to quit on demand.). It is primarily the developer's job to write code to talk to the task manager though so the user doesn't have to. The user's job it just to move between the apps. They are correct in that users shouldn't be tweaking these kinds of settings.
Will need new applications with OS 4.0 specific calls to see the feature work. The rest won't by default.
I'm sure it is a bit harder to implement, but suspect that is the basic concept. That is what they appeared to describe from reading several transcripts. It is very similar to their Notifications solution in that will allow the benefits of multitasking without letting every application by default multitask. Only apps aligned with subset of activities that the API allows will get privileges.
I'm also interested by the 'how do you quit' question. Steve said at the end of the Q&A that you don't have to worry about it, so how will TomTom (for example) know whether I want to background it or if I'm fine to have it quit completely and stop giving me directions when I hit the home button?
I don't want to have every single app open at once. Even if the background apps only take up a tiny amount of RAM/CPU it'll still add up and slow down the phone.
I don't want to have every single app open at once. Even if the background apps only take up a tiny amount of RAM/CPU it'll still add up and slow down the phone.
RE: "Why can't Mail be downloading mail from my various accounts in the background?"
I'd agree that it appears that their multitasking is really just compromised multitasking, but I think you are confusing multitasking with a windowed UI, which are totally different concepts.
IMO, a windowed UI would have been somthing they SHOULD have done for the iPad, but it's not something that is well suited for the small form-factor of the iPhone or iPodTouch.
I mean, Apple isn't looking to recreate the OQO. Small screen size being the biggest drawback of the OQO.
Besides, even ignoring the HUGE issues with screen real-estate and resolution, there's still the issue in how to interpret the multi-touch input. Should each touch in a window be translated to that app, or should all touches be directed to only the focused app? (etc)
But as to why your mail can't be downloading from various accounts in the background.... It can.
That is, just as long as your email account provider supports Exchange access. (Exchange=True PUSH email, not just periodic polling of an email server to check for updates.)
Before this update, that was one of my beefs with the phone. Because it only supports ONE exchange account.
I was/am always itching to use gmail sync with it but my work exchange email trumps personal email for the single slot.
Now (if Apple is to be believed), they've implemented Multiple exchange account support! Woo hoo! ^_^
... Now I'll just have to make sure my gmail filters are gold, and are auto-archiving all the pointless crap (especially FB white-noise) so my pocket isn't constantly vibrating. O_O'
Side note: Your twitter feed... it's less important than you're letting yourself believe. ;-p
Ugh. I can't believe I just defended a choice made by the fruit-laden nanny-regime that is Apple. >_<
I'd agree that it appears that their multitasking is really just compromised multitasking, but I think you are confusing multitasking with a windowed UI, which are totally different concepts.
IMO, a windowed UI would have been somthing they SHOULD have done for the iPad, but it's not something that is well suited for the small form-factor of the iPhone or iPodTouch.
I mean, Apple isn't looking to recreate the OQO. Small screen size being the biggest drawback of the OQO.
Besides, even ignoring the HUGE issues with screen real-estate and resolution, there's still the issue in how to interpret the multi-touch input. Should each touch in a window be translated to that app, or should all touches be directed to only the focused app? (etc)
But as to why your mail can't be downloading from various accounts in the background.... It can.
That is, just as long as your email account provider supports Exchange access. (Exchange=True PUSH email, not just periodic polling of an email server to check for updates.)
Before this update, that was one of my beefs with the phone. Because it only supports ONE exchange account.
I was/am always itching to use gmail sync with it but my work exchange email trumps personal email for the single slot.
Now (if Apple is to be believed), they've implemented Multiple exchange account support! Woo hoo! ^_^
... Now I'll just have to make sure my gmail filters are gold, and are auto-archiving all the pointless crap (especially FB white-noise) so my pocket isn't constantly vibrating. O_O'
Side note: Your twitter feed... it's less important than you're letting yourself believe. ;-p
Ugh. I can't believe I just defended a choice made by the fruit-laden nanny-regime that is Apple. >_<
Steve Jobs says new OS is a failure!
The video review on Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/iphone-os-4-hands-on/) shows that the double-tap home button takes you to the running applications. Then to manually close one, simply long-press on it, tap the minus sign in the upper left corner of the icon, and the app closes. So it's a task manager.
So according to Steve Jobs himself, Apple failed! </sarcasm re: failure>
IMHO, it's a beautiful / elegant implementation of a task manager.
The video review on Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/iphone-os-4-hands-on/) shows that the double-tap home button takes you to the running applications. Then to manually close one, simply long-press on it, tap the minus sign in the upper left corner of the icon, and the app closes. So it's a task manager.
So according to Steve Jobs himself, Apple failed! </sarcasm re: failure>
IMHO, it's a beautiful / elegant implementation of a task manager.
Thanks for your insight. That's more or less how I suspected it would work, even before today's event. They did a lot of work to implement Push Notifications and I didn't expect them to abandon it.
This implementation adds on to the concept of Push Notifications which doesn't disrupt the current work done to implement Push and encourages developers to further embrace it. This allows for the experience that users are looking for out of multitasking, without doing it in the traditional sense.
From the video demos I've seen, the "multitasking bar" isn't all that much related to multitasking at all. It's just a "recently used apps bar" that aids in switching back and forth between apps to give you the sense of multitasking.
When a user hits the Home button while listening to Pandora, the app keeps playing music and you can quickly get back to it by finding it in the new bar or navigating to it like you currently do it from the Home screen.
disappointed with lack of 3G multitasking...
Me too... If there is no real benefit to updating i might stay with OS 3. I figure They cant blast me with ads if I don't have OS 4...
I am seriously thinking of jailbreaking my phone now!
Yup, I'm one of those people. I get ads, but no multitasking??Three cheers for forced obsolescence.
Me too... If there is no real benefit to updating i might stay with OS 3. I figure They cant blast me with ads if I don't have OS 4...
I am seriously thinking of jailbreaking my phone now!
Wow, multi-tasking, unified inbox and a flash for the camera and it's ONLY 2010!
Thanks for taking the "ASAP" seriously, Steve.
Where did you get a flash from? There wasn't a new iphone announcement...
So true. Sliding doc aka infindock. Close apps just like Proswitcher and Kirikae. Did they hire all the people from Cydia