Apple to Allow Background Tasks on iPhone?

[Virgil-TB2]

If they allow apps to run in the background they'll be contradicting what they said about process managers and how they made fun of Windows Mobile. Also, running stuff in the background isn't just about battery life... what about available RAM? My iPhone hardly has enough RAM to have a web page open in the background with iPod running. The other day the iPod app crashed for no reason... I can see a lot of crashes for low memory due to 3rd party apps running in the background with possible huge memory leaks.

I just want Apple to make an iChat app.

Agreed. People always seem to forget about the very limited RAM the iPhone operates on.

I would bet that we will get background notifications in addition to backgrounding because backgrounding not only still has problems even with a much faster processor, but it's not even really do-able on the 3G. We will probably get both things and the reason for the delay is the integration of both choices into some kind of design where either the user can make decisions about which programs are using what resources, or the same thing is done automatically.

 

[nickXedge]

Yeah, because we all know that Apple likes to get things perfect before putting them out, just like 1.0.0 and 2.0, and the new unibodies with battery issues and OS 10.5 with a slew of networking issues, and TV that was next to useless since it crashed so much, and the iPod touch that had iPhone errors constantly.

They like to get things perfect before releasing them, so I'm sure push notifications will work without a hitch when it comes...

You forgot about MobileMe.

 

[fleshman03]

Wouldn't this need better/newer hardware?

My 1g touch chokes up a bit when I try and listen to music + web surf.

I'd think more RAM + more cores or faster processor...

Current Specs for iPod Touch:

Memory = 128 MB DRAM
CPU = 1st generation: ARM11 400 MHz / 2nd generation: ARM11 533 MHz

Current Specs for iPhone:
620 MHz ARM 1176, underclocked to 412 MHz

Maybe more RAM is needed?
Why not let the iPhone processor run at a better speed than 412MHz? I'd imagine it could use more power.

 

[Rychiar]

well we are talking about iPhone 3.0 software which will be native to the iPhone 3.0 hardware. im sure there will be minimal background stuff for current hardware as this article states but the majority will be for the new device. I skipped the whole iPhone 3G thing cus it wasn't enough of an improvement and im lookin foward to renewing my contract to a truly brand new device

 

[TheSpaz]

Wouldn't this need better/newer hardware?

My 1g touch chokes up a bit when I try and listen to music + web surf.

I'd think more RAM + more cores or faster processor...

Current Specs for iPod Touch:

Memory = 128 MB DRAM
CPU = 1st generation: ARM11 400 MHz / 2nd generation: ARM11 533 MHz

Current Specs for iPhone:
620 MHz ARM 1176, underclocked to 412 MHz

Maybe more RAM is needed?
Why not let the iPhone processor run at a better speed than 412MHz? I'd imagine it could use more power.

Making the iPhone faster isn't going to make a difference for RAM. The iPhone needs more RAM or at least virtual memory.

 

[MhzDoesMatter]

I could see them taking the same approach to mobile safari pages, with some status icon by open apps on the springboard, sometype of callable dock/switcher, and (safari part) a hard limit to how many user apps can be open at the same time, and a pop up notice that allows u to quit one app to continue launching another. I think we could all do with no more than four or five apps and then the addition of the Push App. If the older iphones (I have 1 Gen) support less apps, then its incentive to upgrade.

 

[bbplayer5]

What if they allowed for virtual memory on the flash memory use for the OS/Apps? I think that would help.. maybe put a preference pane in asking how much memory you want to use.

 

[wrxdrunkie]

Also, I did forget I have an active clock on my springboard, thanks Tosui!! I guess that brings the apps running in the background to 3, with safari open! hmmm i guess i just have a phone that produces more memory when i need it!!

LOL its like no matter what, they will not believe you.


I guess your just some guy that loves to waste his time on posts that are completly fictional

 

[slide16]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

I really hope they aren't dropping push notifications altogether. Some applications simply don't make sense to be running all the time. For Tweetie push notifications make much more sense while for AOL Radio, Pandora or even AIM running in the background would make more sense.

I fear that Apple thinks now push notifications is too hard and to make up for the lack thereof they are instead implementing background running processes.

The sidekicks had the best AIM experience and in real time. If that pos can do push why is it so tuff for Apple????

 

[Riemann Zeta]

If they truly designed the iPhone with no intentions of native third-party apps running (which is how they marketed it when it was released -- everything was to be a webapp, until they finally gave in), I guess 128MB probably made sense then.

Excellent point. It is easy to forget that Apple might not have intended 3rd-party iPhone development to come this far (we've come a long way, baby). However, I would think that they planned to allow some degree of 3rd party development all along, but needed to get the iPhone hardware out as soon as possible (just as they did with the iPod, which allowed them to kill off the minidisc and set precedence in the then-emerging portable MP3-player market). The hardware was thus released far before they had a completely specified set of APIs and a 3rd-party ready SDK, as the mobile OS build was still essentially in beta.

As an aside: to everyone thinking that virtual memory management could be the answer, doesn't the iPhone OS already do that? I mean, it is running a mach-derivative unix kernel--doesn't the mach kernel mandate virtual memory?

 

[markm49uk]

I don't really agree with your conclusions. First of all, there is bound to be a new iPhone coming, probably with more RAM. (Edit: I mean that this would allow more background stuff in the future so the 1 or 2 app limit now would not be present for the new iPhone owners)

Second of all, if Apple is wise enough, they won't allow the apps to keep running themselves, but instead allow a normal app to launch a separate background process in the background, with very high restrictions on memory and CPU usage.

If these background apps use shared libraries for TCP/IP etc, they could be implemented with a footprint of say 100-500kB of RAM. They would just communicate over the internet (or with the GPS) and buffer their data, and only if something happens that the user should know about (e.g. an incoming IM), they could wake the iPhone up and warn the user, who can then start the full app to see and respond to the event.

This could really be done with a very small footprint and has the added benefit of having very low CPU usage as well. There is really no point in keeping a whole app (including GUI etc) in memory just to do some backgrounding stuff. Current jailbreak hacks do exactly that, which is why they're so slow.

At last someone who actually has some idea on how to develop small footprint background daemons - we should not be thinking full scale applications here which would kill the device but rather a framework that would allow such a process to communicate with a particular application if required/configured.

 

[SleepyHead157]

that would be nice but I don't really want it for too many apps, maybe just the AIM and Pandora Radio App

 

[fleshman03]

Making the iPhone faster isn't going to make a difference for RAM. The iPhone needs more RAM or at least virtual memory.

They don't allow for this already? I thought it could do swap in/outs.

 

[Casiotone]

Looking at a thread somewhere about the Android powered G1, there was a few complaints from users about slowness and/or short battery life.

The solution proposed by other G1 users? Reboot the device, to clear out background processes that are eating cpu-cycles and battery life...

 

[skeep5]

I just want Apple to make an iChat app.

Amen! That would be great.

 

[mac jones]

For me the iPhone is useless as a Web device without a way to set up auto-form filling.


Anything document related.

 

[markm49uk]

They don't allow for this already? I thought it could do swap in/outs.

Nope - certainly not within the sandbox environment anyway.

This from the Apple Human Interface pdf:

Memory is a critical resource in iPhone OS, so managing memory in your application is crucial. Because the iPhone OS virtual memory model does not include disk swap space, you must take care to avoid allocating more memory than is available on the device. When low-memory conditions occur, iPhone OS warns the running application and may terminate the application if the problem persists. Be sure your application is responsive to memory usage warnings and cleans up memory in a timely manner.

As you design your application, strive to reduce the application’s memory footprint by, for example, eliminating memory leaks, making resource files as small as possible, and loading resources lazily.

 

[monkeytennis]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I can't understand how apple can say their iPhone I'd the best phone out there yet even though it's been out for 2 years it doesn't have push

And yet by the way your word "is" seems to have autocorrected to "I'd", you appear to be using an iPhone anyway??

 

[wh00pers]

Well, like me and many others, the reason to purchase the iPhone 3G was the fact that push notifications was coming a few months later. It would suck if they released another iPhone that fixes the problems to get background apps or push notifications running.

 

[dernhelm]

I hope there will be a way that I can prioritize these Apps such as a Unix nice command. The problem with background app is they will like to chew down your battery, and possibly create larger security issues.

Hopefully it would work a little better than nice did. But if not it would make for a pretty good placebo I suppose.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

Because the iPhone OS virtual memory model does not include disk swap space.

Interesting. As I said above, virtual memory is mandated by the mach kernel memory manager. But what does virtual memory do if there is no swap space--isn't that the whole point of VM? I've run top on the iPhone to look at the active processes; how does one have a giant address space and applications with hilariously large VM shadows (like 330MB) if there is no disk paging?

 

[dernhelm]

I don't really agree with your conclusions. First of all, there is bound to be a new iPhone coming, probably with more RAM. (Edit: I mean that this would allow more background stuff in the future so the 1 or 2 app limit now would not be present for the new iPhone owners)

Second of all, if Apple is wise enough, they won't allow the apps to keep running themselves, but instead allow a normal app to launch a separate background process in the background, with very high restrictions on memory and CPU usage.

If these background apps use shared libraries for TCP/IP etc, they could be implemented with a footprint of say 100-500kB of RAM. They would just communicate over the internet (or with the GPS) and buffer their data, and only if something happens that the user should know about (e.g. an incoming IM), they could wake the iPhone up and warn the user, who can then start the full app to see and respond to the event.

This could really be done with a very small footprint and has the added benefit of having very low CPU usage as well. There is really no point in keeping a whole app (including GUI etc) in memory just to do some backgrounding stuff. Current jailbreak hacks do exactly that, which is why they're so slow.

TSR all over again...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_Stay_Resident

 

[markm49uk]

Hopefully it would work a little better than nice did. But if not it would make for a pretty good placebo I suppose.

So true....it always made me feel better to give my reports/tasks a higher priority than others but never seemed to make that much difference overall.

 

[tacoman667]

Push Notifications would be great for applications with a webservice counterpart to send te notifications from. What about those applications that are solely packaged into the application you install on the phone? A task management application that does not have a webservice counterpart would still need to assess the date and tasks due on that date to notify you through a icon badge on the home screen or a popup window like the alertview. Push notifications still would require an off-phone service/server to send notifications.

 

[G4R2]

This reminds of Apple's stance with multitasking in the original Mac OS. Apple dismissed the need for preemptive multitasking in a computer OS arguing that users simply didn't require it. When they finally did realize that multitasking would be valuable to users they chose to release something called cooperative multitasking insisting that this was better for users. It was not and Apple eventually incorporated the preemptive multitasking that we all enjoy today.

This was infuriating for me as at the time I owned an Amiga that essentially ran circles around Macs with both its software and its hardware which included in addition to one of the first consumer preemptive multitasking OS's dedicated graphics and audio processors with stereo sound, color displays, speech synthesis, the AREXX scripting language that preceded Applescript, a CLI, and an object oriented OS along with numerous desktop (Workbench in Amiga parlance) enhancements.