Apple to Allow Background Tasks on iPhone?

[kdarling]

Obviously, I don't know what goes on in Cupertino, but it's clear that Apple had a plan and they seemed pretty confident (re: the announced September date) it would work.

I think they jumped too soon on the idea. When Jobs first described it, it was clear to any senior developer (who's had to do this kind of thing before) that it was not at all well thought out.

The entire concept has communication state holes in it. Developers would need their own servers for even stupid little apps. The background push would chew up battery for many users. And yes, not to mention the need for 100% reliable Apple servers, something they're probably not ready to provide.

They might go ahead with it just for IM apps, though, and to save some face.

 

[Trajectory]

The reason Apple hasn't been able to get this feature working is because they were way too stingy with the amount of memory they put in each iPhone. Unfortunately, that cannot be fixed with a firmware update.

 

[chr1s60]

I think it is best for Apple to take their time and get everything figured out before releasing something that is going to end up not working right. That would just create more people complaining. A lot of the time the final product makes the wait worth it.

 

[apeacock]

The reason Apple hasn't been able to get this feature working is because they were way too stingy with the amount of memory they put in each iPhone. Unfortunately, that cannot be fixed with a firmware update.

I hope you mean a hardware update - color me impressed if they manage to add memory through a firmware update.

I too think that background daemons are the way to go. The issue with backgrounder right now is you're backgrounding the entire app - GUI and all. With a properly designed background daemon only a small amount of code needs to stay running, rather than an entire application. A lot of memory can be saved this way.

 

[cloudnine]

So, I used to think the "jailbreakers" of the world were a bit too smug with their "well I can do that" attitude, but since I've "made the switch" to jailbreaking, I can see why. It's a simple thing to do, and I've had "Backgrounder" since day 1. With its most recent update, you can choose which applications you want to run in the background in a preference panel, and everything just works as it should. I can run Beejive in the background, no problems, and I don't even think about it... I definitely recommend jailbreaking to anyone who's on the fence about it

 

[slughead]

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...

pwnt.

 

[richard4339]

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 sounds plausible to me, especially considering I would assume this is how push email is already done.

 

[TheSpaz]

So, I used to think the "jailbreakers" of the world were a bit too smug with their "well I can do that" attitude, but since I've "made the switch" to jailbreaking, I can see why. It's a simple thing to do, and I've had "Backgrounder" since day 1. With its most recent update, you can choose which applications you want to run in the background in a preference panel, and everything just works as it should. I can run Beejive in the background, no problems, and I don't even think about it... I definitely recommend jailbreaking to anyone who's on the fence about it

Do apps still look funny when coming to the foreground again? (the status bar becoming detached as it zooms in)

 

[asdavis10]

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.

I think they realized that a PNS was too difficult to implement when a 'task manager' would do the job just fine. Why spend all that time and money on infrastructure of this service when you can just put those developers to work on writing some new code. The people that will suffer from background processes will be 1st and 2nd gen iPhone users. The 3rd gen iPhone will have to have better battery life and a better processor to make this work good.

 

[preservative]

Does this mean we're getting more turn by turn navigation software then?

 

[TheSpaz]

I think they realized that a PNS was too difficult to implement when a 'task manager' would do the job just fine. Why spend all that time and money on infrastructure of this service when you can just put those developers to work on writing some new code. The people that will suffer from background processes will be 1st and 2nd gen iPhone users. The 3rd gen iPhone will have to have better battery life and a better processor to make this work good.

You meant: "...make this work well."

 

[Masquerade]

good! this will add more value to iphone as computing device. would be great too if apple recognize the importance of a phyeical keyboard add in and some trivial features that people are asking for and they cant get by 3rd parties.

 

[wizard]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: 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)

Many issues with battery life coming to an iPhone near you.

That is simply BS. Background apps don't have to imply poor battery life. In any event how do you think Mail and some of Apples other background apps work.

Besides if one of those Apple background apps happens to get caught up in a loop it kills the iPhone battery today. Bugs, and just bad software are no excuse to keep the capability off the machine. The important thing is for users to realize what any specific app will do to battery life.

It will be very useful for some but I was really hoping for the push notification. Maybe they will get it up and runnig and both will be included.

I suspect that Push will come at some time in the future as I've stated it solves a certain class of problems. It is not the same class of problems that background apps deal with. Which is the most important thing going, solving issues.


Dave

 

[Dreamail]

It's quite possible that the Pre introduction changed the course of Apple's push.

I can see these guys struggling to get push right, then the Pre gets announced and push immediately gets 'steved' so the iPhone can compete more directly.

But it needn't be a bad thing.

If done right, this can also work. For example third party background processes (not for system processes) can be limited to 10% of CPU capacity.
So if you have 10 background processes, they all will crawl, while your iPhone is still responsive and your front application/game reasonably fast.
Process arbitration is the issue here.

But I have the sneaking suspicion that the real culprit is available RAM. All these background processes cannot be constantly swapped in an out of RAM, that would take too much battery juice and time. So they need to be kept in RAM - limiting RAM for everyone else. Not good.
And you want to limit RAM size as this also drains battery more as it needs constant refreshes. Unless you use static RAM which is expensive...

Hard to find the right balance between RAM size, device cost and number and size of background processes.

 

[nacengineer]

+1 Pandora and AOL IM are the only two I need, can't even think about anything else I would care to have push for.

It would be nice if they could add in the iPhone settings a "Which programs may run in the background" and limit it to one or two that you can have running, and you just select from the "approved" list.

What about Simplify Media? Love that app!

 

[twoodcc]

sounds good to me. can't wait to see better hardware in the iphone, and 3.0 software as well

 

[newyorksole]

I think it is best for Apple to take their time and get everything figured out before releasing something that is going to end up not working right. That would just create more people complaining. A lot of the time the final product makes the wait worth it.

I guarantee people are still going to complain when it is released, not because people always nag (which is true though), but because it probably STILL won't be perfect when it's released because of unknown bugs and other problems with individual apps.

 

[w00master]

I do hope that real background processes is what Apple is workin' on. However, I'd MUCH rather have copy and paste. Let's hope that iPhone OS 3.0 is worth the number change.

w00master

 

[RL600]

Re: Apple to Allow Background Tasks on iPhone?

Please Please Please!!

 

[ivladster]

rethinking

Apple is rethinking the whole system of background work. The usual background apps in other phones slow down the overall system performance and drain battery. Apple is thinking of a new way to do this.

I think iPhone 3.0 will have something very nice, like a custom made chip.

 

[w00master]

LOL, guess you're a little behind aren't you?

Don't expect that thing to come to market. Apple's recent patent victories have made the majority of that product illegal. Expect it to change radically or totally disappear.

I HIGHLY doubt this. Also, there's a case to be made that Apple themselves maybe violating some of Palm's patents. If Apple sued, it's definitely not a clear cut win for Apple. Palm Pre is definitely coming out.

All this talk about Apple suing Palm in my mind a bunch of hooey. If you read what Cook said carefully, there's nothing in there that directly indicates that Apple is going to sue Palm. I highly doubt that this will go to court.

w00master

 

[el3ktro]

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 agree. For apps like Twitterific, Fring etc. push notifications would be the perfect thing. For apps like Pandora etc. background processes - like the pre-installed iPod app does it - would be the right thing. I hope Apple implements both: Push notifications for apps that need it, and the ability in the SDK to allow apps WHERE IT MAKES SENSE to run in the background. I don't think it's necessary to generally allow all apps to go in the background, because for most apps this doesn't make sense and isn't needed at all. But for those apps where it does make sense, devs should be allowed to optionally put the app in the background upon request of the user.

 

[Bobthemonkey]

Something is afoot within the iPhone team, and pre-haps Apple itself.

We have this coming soon after de facto confirmation of an iPhone Flash port: change is in the air. It may be new hardware, or maybe a serious re-write of this fork of OSX, leveraging the changes coming from Snow Leopard. It could be that some people fell more open about talking during Job's leave of absence (or a clever set of organized leaks while Steve is away, so when he returns the mythos of a leak-tight Apple is retained). I don't know, but somethings up and I'm intrigued.

 

[SirROM]

It's quite possible that the Pre introduction changed the course of Apple's push.

I can see these guys struggling to get push right, then the Pre gets announced and push immediately gets 'steved' so the iPhone can compete more directly.

The Apple ”I“ know would not have been the least bit surprised by Palm's announcement and would have anticipated such a move by Palm or someone else. Hence, the push project didn't get ”Steve'd“ as a reaction to external forces, but would have been stopped only for an internal reason.

Remember: ...where the puck is going to be, not where it is right now.

 

[MattInOz]

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.

That is exactly what Launchd was designed to do. Allow a larger program to register with the OS when it should be told of events, or have small events preformed on it behalf. Best still the OS itself uses the this service so it's already in the footprint.

Maybe a jailbreak programmer can tell us how complete launchd is in the phone.

It could be a backend issue what with MobileMe issues. Wouldn't any push service be reliant on Apple's mass murder of Cyrus machines that run the service.