Apple to Allow Background Tasks on iPhone?

[mavis]

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Keep multiple applications open and move easily between them ;-)

I reckon that this Palm® Pre™ is going to keep Apple up at nights for a little while yet. Competition is good.

Cheers Daniel

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.

First of all there appears to be a total lack of understand about the way the iPhone currently handles memory, by the majority of users.

There is NOT enough memory for even a SINGLE additional app to run normally in the backgorund. Period.

128 mb of memory, 90 mb of which is constantly in use. 45 distributed amongst the Phone and Mail app. An additional 10 each sucked up by iPod and Safari once they are opened.

20 mb is just barely enough to run a 3rd party app smoothly, let alone KEEP it running and move on to something more.

Sorry but the article is total nonsense and doesn't even consider reality in its conclusions.

The HARDWARE HAS NOT CHANGED,THEREFOR the method for "background" processes (push) has not changed. Its simply not ready for 3rd party implementation.

Hack your phone and use backgrounder. Positive results? NOPE. Worst thing you could do.

Shh. The logic will disappoint all the Apple sheep. 

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Wow - remind me why you have Apple products ?

I can have my share of gripes. I was smart enough to avoid the 1.0 releases, but I still got hit by that mobileme cluster f**k.
Apple, in recent releases, has not tried to get a "perfect release" which is why I think it's stupid when people say that Push is so delayed just because they're trying to get it right. We all know that when (if) it comes it will be buggy and falling apart at the seams.

You forgot about MobileMe.

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH MYYYYYYY GOD!

Finally Apple is wising up. Push, while useful, only solves a limited number of issues. User multitasking is very important.

I however do understand the limitations of the current iPhone.

Yeah, but after what they said about apps running in the background there's no way they're going to allow for background apps. They **might** allow for background daemons to be run from 3rd party apps, but that's it.

pwnt.

Thanks

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Shh. The logic will disappoint all the Apple sheep. 

only people on iPhones can see that little emoticon...

 

[kdarling]

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.

Not sure why you're bashing him, since apparently you're more "behind". The recent patents do no such thing.

What if they allowed for virtual memory on the flash memory use for the OS/Apps?

Alas, the type of Flash that Apple buys only has a 5,000 erase/write cycle life. That's okay for music and apps. But as a constantly used swap area? No sir.

 

[sjo]

Keep multiple applications open and move easily between them ;-)

I reckon that this Palm® Pre™ is going to keep Apple up at nights for a little while yet. Competition is good.

Cheers Daniel

the palm pre programming model appears to be somewhat extended version of what s. jobs first offered for iphone developers - kind of rich web application environment with a possibility for local storage and access to some cell phone functionality.

it's not quite as rich as iphone development environment and further still from symbian and winmo development enviroments.

so the limitations on apps are just different on palm pre. "background apps" is more like having multiple web pages open as opposed to true background applications as we know them on pc's.

as for the news, it seems as though macrumors don't have any sources on this one, only speculation. i agree allowing background apps is exactly what apple should do (as opposed to trying to "innovate" around it with ad hoc solutions), but at the same time i'm a little surprised if macrumors starts to make up rumors out of thin air.

 

[applemumba]

multi-core processors = 1 core for standard iPhone apps, 1 core for all other apps running also in background.

Mmmm iPhone 3.0??

 

[koobcamuk]

I think the iPhone will have some great ideas and some struggles.

Primarily though, whenever I go to use or look at another phone, I am not even tempted. It's like the best woman ever. (In terms of you don't want any other).

 

[Lara F]

I don't care about background processes as much, I care more for push notification services on all apps.

It would be nice/useful to have this for Facebook, LinkedIn, etc... Having to check for status updates and messages all the time is a bit cumbersome.

I'm the opposite - while push would be great, I listen to streaming media all the time (top apps being FStream, Pocket Tunes, Pandora and Slacker) and the more I use the iPhone the more not having background processes is frustrating me. I have Slacker on right now and if I wasn't at a PC I wouldn't be able to go online, nor can I chat. And those aren't quick things like checking mail/Facebook/Twitter/weather for updates. It really would make a big difference for me and I don't want to have to jailbreak for the functionality (but probably will if it doesn't come by summer).

 

[gnasher729]

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?

Page-outs are used for user data that has been modified.

Page-ins are used for that, and for all system and application data that stays unmodified. That includes code (frameworks and application code), fonts, bitmaps, sounds, videos etc.

 

[!¡ V ¡!]

iPhone/iPod Touch 3.0 finally background processing, glad I waited this long, though very tempted with the 2.0. This is becoming more of an Ultra Mobile Device.

 

[Digital Skunk]

iPhone/iPod Touch 3.0 finally background processing, glad I waited this long, though very tempted with the 2.0. This is becoming more of an Ultra Mobile Device.

It will be an UMPC when it gets the ability to edit and create documents and wirelessly send (Bluetooth) files to other devices. Also be used a storage device.

I agree that I am glad that I waited, but if the iPhone or iPod Touch can't do that at 3.0, while fat ugly Treos (which everyone hates) have been doing it for almost 6 years.

The truth of the matter is the Pre is looking to be a lot better at a lot of things the iPhone does and can't even do. I don't know the small caveats yet, but my money's on it being an all around better UI save for the Apple proprietary stuff like iTunes, Mobile Me, App Store.

 

[NAG]

multi-core processors = 1 core for standard iPhone apps, 1 core for all other apps running also in background.

Mmmm iPhone 3.0??

This is not a limitation of how many cores the iPhone has. If this was a limitation of the number of cores then background processes on computers wouldn't have been possible until just recently.

This is a memory and battery life issue (the later being even worse with multiple cores, actually).

 

[Sehnsucht]

Wow - remind me why you have Apple products ?

Apparently he's a Rev. A adopter....beeeeeyotch.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Apparently he's a Rev. A adopter....beeeeeyotch.

Not so much. I haven't had a first generation Apple product (except I briefly had an iPod touch, but I got it after a couple of updates). I'm just wary of whatever Apple releases since they don't have a very good track record. Much worse than HP, Sony or Microsoft.


Also: second and fourth generation iPod nanos FTW.

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

No. Terrible idea. I like push. Let's keep push. I mean this "you control what apps run in background" is the exact same thing they mocked when they introduced push.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

No. Terrible idea. I like push. Let's keep push. I mean this "you control what apps run in background" is the exact same thing they mocked when they introduced push.

I think it'd be neat to double tap the home button to bring up a task manager, or something... I can't help but want to run Things running in the background and some instant messengering apps and twitter apps with updates being pushed to them.

 

[kdarling]

No. Terrible idea. I like push. Let's keep push. I mean this "you control what apps run in background" is the exact same thing they mocked when they introduced push.

Yeah, and it was a typical Jobs BS demo... purposely showing all the little processes running instead of the simple list of three or four apps that most people use.

I have a task manager button on the home screen of one of my phones. It takes me about two seconds to hit that, click on an app I don't care about running any more, and continue.

Just last night I was in a waiting room, watching Heroes via Slingbox, and during a commerical I decided to check the news over the web. So I left the Slingplayer going in the background to hear when the commercial ended, and surfed the web for a couple of minutes. Piece of cake.

I also checked pictures on Flickr during commercials using a fancy program. Used some other stuff, too. Eventually Sling player complained that it would work better with more memory for buffering, so I popped over and killed the web browser that was now just sitting there.

Granted, some people don't want to worry about it. That's fine too. No reason it can't default to working as it does now on the iPhone.

 

[akac]

Well, Apple could have easily seen the consequences of such arrangement when they thought about it. It is not exactly rocket science.

Because they didn't know it was going to be so huge. Honestly they didn't. You should have seen the faces at WWDC when they started to realize this was bigger than expected.

 

[akac]

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.

That's not true. The iPhone already runs 20 or so processes right now, though only one third party user interface based app at one time. The daemons do not take much RAM. A background process that handles notifications like this does *not* take up much RAM. Maybe 500k or so.

The thing on the iPhone that takes up tons of RAM are the UI elements. UI based apps take up 2-20MB easily.

So an iPhone can easily handle a background process for notifications. No biggie at all. An iPhone can even, done correctly with quotas and a subclass of some NSBackgroundApp type class run 5-10 background apps easily and without battery issues. But Apple has to majorly update the SDK, XCode, the App Store verification, and much more to properly support this.

 

[rekoil]

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.

I nice'd process will still run down your battery if it's the only process running. nice controls how much CPU a process gets relative to other processes, not total.

 

[erikislame]

Citation Needed

I love how this post has absolutely no link or allusion to a source of any kind.

Yes, i feel like a 5 month delay on an announced feature is crappy and strange for apple, but if there's gonna be a page one rumor, i'd like a source..

 

[dizzy13]

I see a lot of use for having the GPS running in the background all the time and reporting to background apps. Think of the possibilities that open up with that. You could have those speed trap apps alert you as you approach a trap without the full app running. That's just one of many examples.

I think as CPU and battery improve apple will start to open up the device more.

 

[mavis]

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I love how this post has absolutely no link or allusion to a source of any kind.

Yes, i feel like a 5 month delay on an announced feature is crappy and strange for apple, but if there's gonna be a page one rumor, i'd like a source..

Same. Nothing like trying to drum up page hits with unsubstantiated rumors ...

 

[ruinfx]

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Same. Nothing like trying to drum up page hits with unsubstantiated rumors ...

i think ive seen this story linked to on all the tech blogs i have in my google reader too.

 

[vilasgn]

i think ive seen this story linked to on all the tech blogs i have in my google reader too.

LOL...I have raised the same question many times in this thread but no one seems to bother. I love these blogs! They know how to make ad revenue

 

[ziggyonice]

I love how this post has absolutely no link or allusion to a source of any kind.

Yes, i feel like a 5 month delay on an announced feature is crappy and strange for apple, but if there's gonna be a page one rumor, i'd like a source..

If the information was given to MacRumors directly, their sources don't necessarily have to be quoted, since MR is the one who presented the information in the first place.

we've heard that as an alternative Apple is considering allowing apps to run as user selectable background processes