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Apple Announces Multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.50 (Nintendo DSi; Opera/507; U; en-US))

law guy said:
ads within apps - and we're supposed to be excited about that? I love Apple, but I'm not a fan of creating their own content space, which began with the control of the content approval process and pricing a la iTunes and then Apps - Apple controls what you can see on the device and the price and has a stake in the revenue stream. Those are great in and of themselves, but them seem to be getting woven together into an Apple-controlled content world. It reminds me of going back to the AOL space... without all of the free AOL 5,000 hr! diskettes/CDs littering the house.
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Recently, I installed a Dr. Suess game on a iMac G5 (via Classic Enviroment), and it put one of those AOL Free Trial applications on my desktop.
 
Jon the Heretic said:
RAM and CPU excuse BS aside, you can do true multitasking on "older" iPhone devices now. Apple's approach is LESS CPU/memory intensive than that. It is a services model that multitasks only key tasks (the ones that matter); they did this to save on battery live, CPU power, etc. So they either did a really bad job with the services so they need more resources than true multitasking (which I doubt) or this is the usually forced obsolescence we see from Apple from time to time.
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You keep saying this, but in reality you can't. The 3g is often out of RAM without multitasking (hence the slowdowns people experience all the time). In the best-case situation you can jailbreak and run 1 3rd party app in the background, but it will still quit unexpectedly when the phone runs out of RAM. It's not BS, no matter how much you keep saying it.
 
nagromme said:
They’re not shafting anyone. The update for 3G will be free (and for the Touch, optional) and hardware specs improve over time—it always happens. Buyers of the 4G iPhone will eventually find something even IT cannot run. Progress is going to happen.

And ads in apps have ALWAYS existed and always will—that’s nothing new. You need ads or else good, free content will not exist. It’s as simple as that. This way, at least it’s less hassle for devs, and probably for users too. It certainly can’t be worse than the free app ads we’ve long been used to. And devs who want to give away their work for free (and maintain it for free in future—yikes) can still do so.

Apple is NOT forcing ads into free apps.



I’m guessing RAM constraints are more the issue. A shame (I have a 3G) but I was expecting this.

And I’ve seen first-hand what a misery “multitasking” is on my friend’s Android phone. This sounds a lot better. Right down to the background audio services I’ve been wishing for, with mic support and popup controls!



If you try both in actual use, and compare app stores (in between killing tasks that are freezing the Android), you’ll be able to wait :eek: As long as you can use AT&T! (But waiting might solve that limitation too... you never know.)



Apple’s after usability, not bullet-points for a tiny vocal fringe of tech hobbyists. And thank goodness!

We can certainly imagine situations where 1900s-style battery-hogging brute-force multitasking can do a certain think that more modern and efficient solutions can’t. (There’s a laptop for that.) But there’s a constant stream of far more common and useful situations that old-style multitasking is terrible at. It slows down everything, and pocket devices have battery and CPU constraints that cannot be denied—which is why multitasking is such a mess on Android and others.

Although anything new makes people nervous, I suspect we’ll find this new multitasking system was worth the wait, and that its advantages outweigh the compromises.
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Buy this man a drink.
 
justinfreid said:
I think Apple's software development is moving at too slow a pace.
With no support from Apple, third party developers have been able to release almost all of the core OS functionality (and much more) that 4.0 will bring.
Still missing is quick access to fundamental features like Bluetooth, Wifi, and brightness as well as a LockInfo style dashboard and drop down Tweeting, like Qtweeter, and universal access to SMS.
I've become so used to these elements, that without a reliable jailbreak for 4.0 I will not upgrade.
I can't help but think Apple's obvious dominance in the mobile OS market is causing them, or at least allowing them, to drag their heals.
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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. :)
 
Jon the Heretic said:
RAM and CPU excuse BS aside, you can do true multitasking on "older" iPhone devices now. Apple's approach is LESS CPU/memory intensive than that. It is a services model that multitasks only key tasks (the ones that matter); they did this to save on battery live, CPU power, etc. So they either did a really bad job with the services so they need more resources than true multitasking (which I doubt) or this is the usually forced obsolescence we see from Apple from time to time.
Click to expand...

I suspect "Crow" will be on the dining menu when iPhone OS 4.0 is jailbroken and all the older, locked out, Apple iDevices can effectively use Apple's multitasking scheme.
 
Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.50 (Nintendo DSi; Opera/507; U; en-US))

psingh01 said:
A 60/40 split? How generous of Apple...:rolleyes:
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Like they don't get enough money from Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.
 
Ymmv

zhenya said:
You keep saying this, but in reality you can't. The 3g is often out of RAM without multitasking (hence the slowdowns people experience all the time). In the best-case situation you can jailbreak and run 1 3rd party app in the background, but it will still quit unexpectedly when the phone runs out of RAM. It's not BS, no matter how much you keep saying it.
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That is not what we are hearing from others. YMMV. I think what you are really seeing is because a device has been hacked without Apple' quality control.

Moreover, the jailbroken devices are doing true multitasking --- all UNIX based devices have this capability. Apple has it turned off for 3rd party apps because of resource limitations. Apple uses it for their own apps even in OS 3.0.

In contrast, the approach in OS 4.0 is to multitask only key services; this is much less resource intensive than the native UNIX multitasking that jailbreaking exposes. This is why I will wait for OS 4.0 "multitasking" to be added to my device via jailbreaking rather than using what exists today. Apple's services approach promises to be a much better solution for older devices than what normal jailbreaking can get you today.
 
Jon the Heretic said:
That is not what we are hearing from others. YMMV. I think what you are really seeing is because a device has been hacked without Apple' quality control.

Moreover, the jailbroken devices are doing true multitasking --- all UNIX based devices have this capability. Apple has it turned off for 3rd party apps because of resource limitations. Apple uses it for their own apps even in OS 3.0.

In contrast, the approach in OS 4.0 is to multitask only key services; this is much less resource intensive than the native UNIX multitasking that jailbreaking exposes. This is why I will wait for OS 4.0 "multitasking" to be added to my device via jailbreaking rather than using what exists today. Apple's services approach promises to be a much better solution for older devices than what normal jailbreaking can get you today.
Click to expand...

I understand how it works, but multi-tasking has been my #1 thing for some time now, and I tried everything I could to make it work reasonably on the 3g. The reality was that, yes, I could run a background app like Pandora relatively well if NOTHING else was running (ie. Mail and Safari were truly quit). If they weren't, and say, I had a few tabs open in Safari, the phone would typically have 3-5MB of RAM available, and as soon as I opened Pandora, one of the other apps would be force quit to free enough RAM. Run Pandora and then open Safari? Pandora would typically force quit. That's the thing - there is barely enough RAM in the first place. It doesn't matter how efficient the multi-tasking API is if it can barely run the bare phone without multi-tasking.

I upgraded to the 3gs 100% for the extra RAM, and multi-tasking on it is fantastic.
 
Hi

macsimcon said:
Perhaps, but Apple is all about turning complicated systems into easy to use ones.

And have you ever used a jailbroken iPhone? The iPhone has more than enough power to provide useful multitasking for a few apps at once.
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A couple of friends of mine have jailbroken theirs and I was going to do it but it felt a little sluggish, but I did like what they could do with it. My hope was that apple would come up with a solution and I think they have. Maybe not perfect. I'm mostly happy to have pandora playing in the background while I surf, or compose an email. I guess I'm not what you would call a power user (not on the iphone anyway). Let's hope Apple keeps innovating!
 
Kudos to Apple for thinking about user experience considerations so heavily in their multitasking implementation.

Back when traditional multitasking was invented decades ago, the idea was that each application would receive an entire virtual computer to run on, complete with all available OS facilities as if the application was by itself. This was extremely useful on the room-sized minicomputers for which it was designed, but has always had practical usability issues on the desktop (usually when users are dissatisfied with their PC performance, some kind of background application is the cause) . On a phone those issues are worse.

It would have been WAY easier for Apple to go this way, but instead they have clearly taken a lot of time to design how apps are going to share resources and where those resources are going to come from. This is very much a user-centric choice.
 
bludodge said:
i wonder how many 3G's are out there being used, and how many 3GS's? I'm guess the majority of iPhones are 3G.s. Big loss for us, but understand why its the case. So I am predicting some 3Gers will be upgrading.......
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I have a 3G and I'm not gonna upgrade if the next IPHONE does not support LTE (Long Term Evolution) Technology, however if it had a front facing camera and faster processor or dual core, that might convince me to upgrade even though its not LTE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution
 
Fail?

macsimcon said:
This is completely unimaginative. Apple should be ashamed to develop such an underwhelming OS update.

FAIL.
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I understand that declaring "FAIL" on something is trendy talk these days, but labeling the iPhone and/or iPhone OS etc. a "FAIL" is so utterly false it immediately invalidates any argument it is attached to.
 
ibwb said:
Kudos to Apple for thinking about user experience considerations so heavily in their multitasking implementation.

Back when traditional multitasking was invented decades ago, the idea was that each application would receive an entire virtual computer to run on, complete with all available OS facilities as if the application was by itself. This was extremely useful on the room-sized minicomputers for which it was designed, but has always had practical usability issues on the desktop (usually when users are dissatisfied with their PC performance, some kind of background application is the cause) . On a phone those issues are worse.

It would have been WAY easier for Apple to go this way, but instead they have clearly taken a lot of time to design how apps are going to share resources and where those resources are going to come from. This is very much a user-centric choice.
Click to expand...

I thought time-slicing was prevalent way back when... I need to go and brush up on me histories :)
 
ibwb said:
Kudos to Apple for thinking about user experience considerations so heavily in their multitasking implementation.

Back when traditional multitasking was invented decades ago, the idea was that each application would receive an entire virtual computer to run on, complete with all available OS facilities as if the application was by itself. This was extremely useful on the room-sized minicomputers for which it was designed, but has always had practical usability issues on the desktop (usually when users are dissatisfied with their PC performance, some kind of background application is the cause) . On a phone those issues are worse.

It would have been WAY easier for Apple to go this way, but instead they have clearly taken a lot of time to design how apps are going to share resources and where those resources are going to come from. This is very much a user-centric choice.
Click to expand...
see: WebOS

Meh, its the whole Apple does it and it revolutionary effect i guess.
 
litteraround said:
jailbreaking is pretty much obsolete now other than for those who pirate, or those who use apps like gvoice, i.e not available in app store.:apple:
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LOL hahahah thats an outrageous comment, jailbreaking isnt just for pirated apps... customize your iphone completely, themes, sounds, alerts, feel and lockscreen. AND the MultiFl0W or ProSwitcher is a better form of multitasking than the one they previewed... it takes a pic of your last state in the app and is not so small...
 
Here is a simple solution - just add more RAM! Reminder: Nexus One has 2x more RAM than iPhone 3GS. Do not rob users of the real multitasking for the sake of your profit margins.
 
-aggie- said:
I have the 16 GB 3G. I'm jailbroke, got multi-tasking and folders and much more. Yet, I can't upgrade to 4.0. Yeah, right. BS.
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No, you can upgrade to 4.0, you just won't get every part of it, and for good reason.
 
6+ Months for Multitasking on the iPad

:mad:

Steve really let me down on this one. After hyping the iPad for months and then selling hundreds of thousands of them, I suspected that multitasking would come right along with the iPhone. Naturally, I should known something smelt rotten in Cupertino.

Happy about my iPhone finally becoming more versatile but I am extremely disappointed about the iPad's continued neutering until the fall. And we don't even know when the date is? It could be late Sept or early Dec?

That's the thing about Apple. Their products are fantastic and work well. But occasionally, they do stuff like this. For a loyal Apple owner, it does, frankly, piss me off. Maybe if we kick and scream, it'll come faster. But I bet that'll make Steve and Co. move slower.
 
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