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Apple Announces Multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0
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Cause he's trolling, not paying attention.
I am happy for all these new features as they were sorely missed and some should have been included in OS 2 (hello universal inbox?). But it is disappointing that nothing "original" was introduced, just feature catch up.
Ok!
Let's be more specific and I'll bet you a gifted $.99 app.
Any iPad hardware announcement (not software, not price) before the first day of winter, December 20 at 23:59, I win. Otherwise, you win.
Suffering buyer's remorse already?
Let's be more specific and I'll bet you a gifted $.99 app.
Any iPad hardware announcement (not software, not price) before the first day of winter, December 20 at 23:59, I win. Otherwise, you win.
Suffering buyer's remorse already?
Dude, it's an ad service like the many already out there. It doesn't force you to look at ads any more than you do right now.
This gets my VOTE for quote of the year. I too feel the same way, I would give up too much from my now-current jailbroken phone for 4.0. I have most of today's announced features and more. Steve Jobs should thank Backgrounder, Catagories, Music Control, etc. They are already done for them.
Thanks!
Pretty gutsy rocking "Windows Vista" in your signature
.
Keynote is online, though in the Apple Special Event Podcast...
Edit: and on apple.com: Keynote iPhone OS 4.0
Edit: and on apple.com: Keynote iPhone OS 4.0
iPhone multitasking is limited to these 7 specific activities :
(http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/whats-new.html#multitasking)
1. Background audio
2. Voice over iP
3. Background location
4. Push notifications ( in some sense already there )
5. Local notifications ( similar to push can event sent from other app on device)
6. Task finishing ( can finish a specific task. suppose this could be huge barndoor if make into one. )
7. Fast app switching (come back in same state but looks like don't do anything between activation. Looks alot like: swap out to storage till user explicitly brings back in. If earlier CPUs punted on a MMU would be a show stopper.)
Suspect Apple isn't going to allow running a WiFi/3G bridge router as "task finishing". An app copying a file is different than a server daemon endlessly waiting for client requests. Or following on copying files, two apps passing file data between themselves so can get a doc from one app space to another and back.
The fact that the applications have to make explicit calls for it to work makes it different than the usual preemptive multitasking where there are no explicit calls in the application at all. The app pretends that it has access and just plows ahead (putting aside GUI event notification processing.)
Im with you on this one. I used to get excited about iphone updates, but i don't bother even having an iphone these days. There was a bit of me that was thinking that if OS4 was amazing i would go back, but this just shows what i have grown to see of apple. They rest on their larrels. Yes, they brought out the iphone, but people are doing proper multitasking already. iphone users have had to wait till os version 4 to get it, and then it seems its not really multitasking. Why can't you run multiple aps you you described above?
BIG FAIL +1
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)
You can get your Twitter updates in the background with push notifications, and you can then switch back to the "frozen" Twitter app without having to relaunch it. So your updates continue to come in and you don't have to relaunch the app. If that's not multitasking then I don't know what is.
Mail has been able to do what you suggest since June 2007.
No you can't see two apps on the screen at once, on this or any other phone platform. You really want to run apps on 1/3 of the screen, or about 1" of space?
The only "fail" here is your lame trolling.
macsimcon said:
You can get your Twitter updates in the background with push notifications, and you can then switch back to the "frozen" Twitter app without having to relaunch it. So your updates continue to come in and you don't have to relaunch the app. If that's not multitasking then I don't know what is.
Mail has been able to do what you suggest since June 2007.
No you can't see two apps on the screen at once, on this or any other phone platform. You really want to run apps on 1/3 of the screen, or about 1" of space?
The only "fail" here is your lame trolling.
No, you're right, but what happens if you have to pause what you are doing until the ad has finished playing?
Running out of things to complain about. I am down to front cameras/video confereicing and the fact that the ipad update is so far away.
Guys, as a developer, I just took a look at the API diff and "what's new in iPhone OS 4" docs, and I saw some gems Steve didn't talk about !
For instance, Grand Central Dispatch is now integrated to iPhone OS 4 (!!!!!!!), and UIKit is now "thread safe"... those two tips make me think that the next iPhone will probably be MULTICORE!
Another interesting point in the doc, is the description of the new framework, accelerate :
"The Accelerate framework (Accelerate.framework) contains interfaces for performing math, big-number, and DSP calculations, among others. The advantage of using this framework over writing your own versions of these libraries is that it is optimized for the different hardware configurations present in iPhone OSbased devices. Therefore, you can write your code once and be assured that it runs efficiently on all devices."
I don't know you, but the word "DSP" is flashing red before my eyes!
Now that Apple master their own CPU production, I bet that the next A4 evolution that will ship with the new iPhone will be multicore and will get a DSP or the equivalent to the MMX addon the x86 have!
Presumably you failed to read the new terms and conditions before you downloaded the new SDK too. NDA!
That depends on your definition of "proper multitasking". If this implementation results in the best performance among mobile devices without impacting the end user experience, then I suggest that Apple is the first one that implemented "proper multitasking". Apple has gone to great lengths to provide a seamless experience, addressing the specific use-cases that required multitasking and providing exceptions for these.
Sometimes you just need to dig into the details to see that the company is being honest with their goals. It probably would have been much simpler to simply provide the task manager and allow 3rd party background processes, and I can't see any financial downside for Apple in simply adopting that approach. Their concerns about battery life and performance are valid and the company treats them very seriously.
I think Apple has shown here their ability to diagnose problems before building solutions here. Given the screen real estate afforded on mobile devices, there are few tasks that can be handles simultaneously. Most exceptions are because the app does not require input for the process to continue to be useful. The company has tried to identify these tasks and provided solutions for individual cases. You may disagree with Apple's logic, but it makes little sense to say they ignored the multitasking request entirely.
For the record: 4.0 does provide full background support from what I can tell, though this needs to be scheduled when the app moves to the background. Furthermore, the way it suspends background processes is very, very different than what was done in 3.x. It reminds me of state-saving in Fusion or Parallels. Would you really want Windows running in the background at all times here, or do you like the save/restore approach?
PS: Read a few developer posts about today and see if your opinion changes. I suspect we'll see some very positive impressions in the days to come.
Did you fail your operating systems class or something? You must have some strange concept of context switching there. Are you seriously implying that an app whose background notification callback gets called will be able to blow away the registers and the stack for the foreground app?
Please tell me you just picked the wrong term for a UI concept.
Will the 3GS be able to run multi-tasking that well? I mean, if they're cancelling out that feature for iPhone 1st gen & iPhone 3G, the 3GS might just be a beginner's step to handle all those apps operating at once. Just saying, it could be a small hint that the 4th gen iPhone has a good chance of containing the iPad's chip. Just over 2 months of waiting left! I think this summer's upgrade is going to be "the iPhone we wanted" back in '07.
Why is it nonsense? Is it that hard to understand that more processing == more power? Your Nexus One may have fine battery life for you, but the life would definitely be better if Android implemented the same approach. Besides, "fine" battery life for you may not be enough for others.
PS: Be prepared for other mobile systems to adopt the same approach.
I thought the way in which Apple has implemented multi-tasking in OS 4.0 was quite clever actually. Theoretically speaking, it should do everything the end user wants it to do. At least, it's a 100% step up from the current OS. So people shouldn't really complain.
The notification system, however, has gone from terrible to possibly the worst system on earth.. or well, on computerized earth. Because now the multi-tasked apps will spam you with notifications, keeping you updated on their status (for example task completion), and now we've also gotten local notifications.
So you'll end up with the following scenario: you receive a text, push notification, local notification, alarm, battery 20% message, etc etc., and you will already have like forgotten that you'd received a text.
Apple's current implementation of notifications is a shame, especially when you compare it to Android, which is a much better and much more useable and organized approach.
OS4.0 seems to be a game changer for iPhone owners, but man, I wish Apple would step up on the notifications one day.
Oh and, I honestly can't comprehend the fact that some people are writhing in agony that their 3G won't support multi-tasking. I too own a 3G, and am perfectly capable of understanding why it won't support multi-tasking; the thing is already running on it's last legs on plain 3.0. There is no way in which you could implement a smooth running multi-tasking solution on an outdated platform such as the 3G.
Plus, the two year 3G contracts are due to be refreshed for the 4G anyway.
I agree 100% with your post. One of my favorite thing on my Droid is the notification panel. It is out of the way and all you have to do is a quick pull down to see all of your notifications in a nice central location. Nothing ever pops up over what you are doing. It just appears at the top and you can check it when you get a minute. Apple should have came up with a proper notification panel like Android has. It is a great feature and makes life very simple.
Wait, can't Android do this, but better? Or are we not allowed to speak the obvious?
It can't. It does the managing memory quite well, but as an Android user here, I have to say I wish we had push notifications like apple did. Other than that I do like Android's multitasking. It's what Apple is following, although I feel like there can be some more work.
Some apps DO need an exit button. Why else do Android users get a task killer as one of their first apps? And Apps in Android DO have an exit button already. However, Android lets more stuff run in the background. Coming from Apple's walled garden, I feel that apps will exit unless specifically instructed not to. You probably have less to worry about task killers than an Android user will.
The one thing they haven't done right is notifications. They could learn something from Palm's Web OS and Android when it comes to that.
I have never used any sort of task killer on my Android phone. Many people say that it causes more problems then letting the phone manage the tasks on it's own. With that said, I will be interested to find out what changes are made for the iPad. I love my iPad, but am looking forward to multi-tasking and hopefully Apple will add some widgets because the iPad would be perfect for them!
I think they've absolutely perfected multitasking. Your main app that your using is in the forefront, while other apps that would be more useful running all the time could stay on without performance suffrage. Additionally, if I'm uploading things with safari, or downloading, I could put that down, and play a game while it's downloading, where before, safari would quit all together. If you watched the keynote you'd realize there is nothing to whine about.
It's posts like these that make me cringe. It's one thing if you make fair criticisms about a faults that are actually there but you instead try to vent your frustration about something you don't even know enough about. Did you even watch the keynote and see how they did it? If you did, and actually knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't be saying any of this. They clearly showed that apps can indeed do things in the background while you are using another app, such as uploading photos to flickr or something. You can stream pandora in the background while doing other things, you can leave skype on while using other apps. Those are just examples. Watch the keynote and know what you talk about before posting. Thanks.
Not quite... (and I "cringed" at your incorrect view on multitasking, btw)
Apps aren't doing it in the background, per-say. Services that the apps use, are doing the background operations. That's why there's a list of what services are available to run in the background:
engadget said:
So no, apps themselves won't be "multitasked", just the services that some apps used. There will still be A LOT of apps that unfortunately will function mostly as they do today.
I'm sure someone else must have said this already but there's one part of the story you're not telling. If you do have a jailbroken iPhone 3G and you're running something like Multiflow or ProSwitcher to multitask there's no way you can tell me with a straight face that your phone isn't lagging all over the place.
I have also jailbroken my iPhone but at this moment I'm only using SBSettings for some quick toggles. After months of running ProSwitcher + Overboard + LockInfo I began to realize that, although I loved the features I got from installing these apps, the iPhone 3G hardware simply cannot run them efficiently. The worst part is that it actually shows, especially when you're in a rush and hit the Messages app and it takes well over 5 seconds to open. IMO that's unnacceptable.
The two things I'm mostly disappointed about:
Lack of a unified notification system (though this one was guaranteed)
No lockscreen redesign (optional but hey, let me add calendar events, recent messages, unread mail or rss feeds to it)
Best example I saw is still this one:
http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2009/09/22/iphone-needs-a-new-home/
Yup. It's a task manager.
But the main bugbear is the lack of ability for apps to start tasks based on any sort of scheduler. This should have been in the background api, but it's not.
For example, the Guardian application allows offline downloads of the paper's stories to allow you to read it when you get on the underground and there's no phone signal. But to do so you have to open the app every morning, press the sync button, wait ten minutes and then quit before getting on a train. It's horrendously clumsy.
Why isn't the iPhone OS at a point yet where I (or the newspaper) can tell the app there's a new collection of stories at 7:00am, so while it's sat in my dock just before I wake up it could automatically download from my home wifi? Why can't my Twitter feeds get downloaded every fifteen minutes?
The reality is I'm without any form of signal in underground tube tunnels for three hours a day. Backgrounding implementation could have fixed that, but it hasn't.
QCassidy352 said:
No you can't. Push will send me a Tweet. Just one. I get 300 tweets an hour. I could go into the app, but then I could do that anyway, and it doesn't give me an archive of recent tweets to look at when I've no connection (which lets not forget for iPod Touch users is the majority of the time).
I'm genuinely amazed that the disaster that is the current push notifications framework has been allowed to continue.
Phazer
No, that's not true either. We're not talking about daemons, like status items on the Mac OS. If we were, there would not be a delegate method in the new API's for when applications enter the background. Even I haven't read much of the documentation yet, but it is clear that apps do run in the background, not just system services. If you read the list closely, long-running tasks are somewhat of a catch-all. That said, I'm curious to see how picky is with these WRT approvals.
You will notice the difference for nearly all apps. As I mentioned in another post, this is very similar to state-saving in Fusion or Parallels Desktop. For the record, I completely agree with Apple in this approach (provided the performance for restoring state provides a seamless experience).
Luke
PS: I do hope apple withheld details about an upgraded notification system today. I can easily imagine being bombarded with modal notifications every minute. This is the biggest reason I won't use Windows.