iOS 4.2 GM: New Multitasking Bar, MobileMe Login Changes

[The Phazer]

you should really read up on the multitasking on iOS before making ill informed comments. the bar is a fast app launcher, kinda like a recently used apps list. thats all it is, the apps aren't running, they carry on from where they are as when you leave, they go into a suspended state. only apps that are doing background audio, using location services, task completion etc (ie using one of the 7 background API's) are actually still running.

the fact that closing some and you go back into your game and works fine is just coincedence most likely, or a placebo effect. could be coming out the app and going back in just sorts that app out.

We're all aware of what Steve said multitasking would be, but reality dictates otherwise. Exiting all saved apps frees up RAM which speeds up many applications significantly. The OS does not kill apps in the multitasking tray to free up RAM judiciously enough, and so a task manager is needed given there's no other way to close an app.

Apple pre-installed apps are also free to ignore the multitasking restrictions, so for example the camera app fairly obviously uses processor and RAM resource until it's killed via the multitasking menu.

We're smack in the middle of the same sort of denial that this is an issue from Apple as Windows Mobile users were. You have to kill apps regularly for decent gaming performance. The UX to do this is, bluntly, horrible.

Phazer

 

[Krevnik]

I believe they ARE running. Because I can close them one by one and watch my RAM (wired, free, all of it) go up. Isn't that solid proof that they're running and not just in suspended animation?

Not all of them will be running, if they don't at least support fast app switching which puts them into this "suspended animation" instead of simply quitting the app.

But just because RAM is in use, doesn't mean the process is doing anything. When an app that supports fast app switching is put into the background, it is given a chance to quickly prep itself for being suspended. After that, it gets NO CPU time. It's effectively frozen, but still in RAM. From there, a couple things can happen. It can be closed out by the system or user, where it will get a chance to save it's state (like pre 4.x) and then is quit. The system will cause this to happen if the foreground process looks like it will need some more RAM and suspended applications are free to be killed. The other thing that can happen is that the user brings the app back to the foreground where it is allowed to continue where it left off and gets CPU time again.

The exception to this rule is the APIs provided by Apple. In that situation, certain events are still allowed to trigger code in the app, but from my understanding, it is fairly limited compared to a foreground app what will be called.

So there are two important things to remember:

1) RAM is fast compared to flash or and HDD. Unused RAM in a mobile device is wasted RAM, since you have to power it either way. So a good use is letting it cache recent applications in this suspended state as long as active apps don't need it.

2) The app list represents the apps that may or may not be in memory, because it maps to this cache in a way. Any app not in the list is definitely not in RAM, and background apps like Pandora cannot run while not in the list. But that doesn't mean an app in the list is running either, just that it may be in RAM, and in fewer cases, running if you told it to (GPS, Background Audio, Task Completion).

 

[Krevnik]

We're all aware of what Steve said multitasking would be, but reality dictates otherwise. Exiting all saved apps frees up RAM which speeds up many applications significantly. The OS does not kill apps in the multitasking tray to free up RAM judiciously enough, and so a task manager is needed given there's no other way to close an app.

Apple pre-installed apps are also free to ignore the multitasking restrictions, so for example the camera app fairly obviously uses processor and RAM resource until it's killed via the multitasking menu.

We're smack in the middle of the same sort of denial that this is an issue from Apple as Windows Mobile users were. You have to kill apps regularly for decent gaming performance. The UX to do this is, bluntly, horrible.

Phazer

In a system like the iPhone that has no swap file, you don't really see slow downs in low memory situations, you see crashes as apps fail to get memory. If anything, slowdowns might be related to the OS purging old apps and giving them some CPU time to clean themselves up, and not the usual congestion you expect on a desktop. On the desktop, the congestion comes from the swap file which is on a much slower media (HDD). You simply will never have that impact on a device with no swap file, but you can crash an app on an attempt to allocate memory.

 

[-AG-]

Kind of off topic but..

Regarding the MobileMe/Apple ID log in.

Does anyone know of a way to change an Apple ID email address?
I set my original account up years ago with a gmail account that is now closed and would like to link it to my MobileMe email without loosing all the stuff that is linked to the account at the moment.

According to Apple i can just create a new account but that kind of defeats the point.

Any info would be appreciated.

 

[crut]

Are you saying my printer that is connected to my airport base station on my network won't work for my iPad via wifi?

You can "re-share" the printer from a mac.

Then it'll work.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I've found an issue with Game Center.

If you've logged in on both iPad and iPhone, you'll stop getting game request. I had to log out of both and then back into 1 before request started working again.

Is there a reason you're not checking issues against this with the Developer Radar solution?

Talking about it on an open forum won't get you much traction.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Why can't they just add this for the iPhone... I'm so sick of the 12 app per folder limit.

File a feature request. They aren't submitted from Macrumors.

 

[aValerio]

NEW in iPHONE!

Volume control in iPhone Multitasking bar (by HDblog.it):

from http://apple.hdblog.it/2010/11/02/a...er-iphone-ipod-touch-e-ipad-in-aggiornamento/ )

 

[aggiesrwe03]

Still no video with airplay hopefully appletv will be updated soon. apple tv has alot of potential with video and pictures hopefully keynote presentations soon too i'd easily take it to presentations with me rather than lugging around my computer and a projector!!

 

[My name is Alex]

Volume control in iPhone Multitasking bar (by HDblog.it):

from http://apple.hdblog.it/2010/11/02/a...er-iphone-ipod-touch-e-ipad-in-aggiornamento/ )

Why volume when you have the hardware buttons on the side, I'd much rather have brightness instead.

 

[drsmithy]

THere IS a task killer, and no, you don't need it. The OS should be smart enough to manage the memory. Android is. I assume iOS will be.

Every Android device I've used and owned, has had noticably worse response time and battery life over time, both of which are improved by one of the numerous automated task killers out there.

The overhead of multitasking is only negligible if you have abundant system resources and/or assurances of well-behaved applications. Neither of those things are true on smart phones, even with the iPhone's walled garden.

 

[Ciclismo]

Still no video with airplay hopefully appletv will be updated soon. apple tv has alot of potential with video and pictures hopefully keynote presentations soon too i'd easily take it to presentations with me rather than lugging around my computer and a projector!!

I'm pretty sure that you will be able to, once your ATV is on iOS 4.2 as well.

 

[baryon]

Lets hope it fixes the alarm clock.

 

[MythicFrost]

Haha cool, I like the addition of the volume -- I went into a YouTube video and started playing, exited it, opened multi-tasking bar and scrolled to the left and tapped "play" and it resumed (audio), previously on my iPhone I'd only ever been able to get that working at the lock screen.

How come I have no AirPlay button though?!?!??!

 

[sths-gr]

Free Mobileme = reason to unjailbreak....

 

[dazcox5181]

Every Android device I've used and owned, has had noticably worse response time and battery life over time, both of which are improved by one of the numerous automated task killers out there.

The overhead of multitasking is only negligible if you have abundant system resources and/or assurances of well-behaved applications. Neither of those things are true on smart phones, even with the iPhone's walled garden.

You really shouldn't need a task killer - never used one on any android device - google and most devs agree that task killers cause more problems as the system starts getting screwy when it's not allowed to manage memory itself...YMMV of course

 

[philstubbington]

Not sure about those sliders!

The volume and brightness sliders are surely going to be very small on the iPhone?

 

[iEdd]

The volume and brightness sliders are surely going to be very small on the iPhone?

I'd go as far as to say they will appear so small you can't see them.

 

[manu chao]

The multi-tasking bar needs complete re-working.

There needs to be a 'close-all' button. I don't want to have to close multiple open apps one by one, which I have to do regularly.

SJ claimed you won't have to worry about closing apps.. well you do, too many open apps lead to a sluggish device.

I doubt that. For sure there are a few individual apps which do keep threads running in the background where quitting them helps overall performance (mainly audio and location apps). And for sure there are bugs that cause the OS to not remove apps as quickly from memory as they should.

Do we need to quit all apps under Mac OS X to keep performance high? No, except for individual cases where some apps keep hanging onto two much memory.

 

[Jayomat]

Also, has any once else noticed that you can fit 20 apps in each 4.2 iPad folder? My iPhone 4 software is still downloading so I'm not sure if it's 4.2 universal or iPad only but it's fantastic. My home screen looks so bare and empty!

UPDATE: iPhone 4.2 is still the same, old, lame, 12 apps per folder.

Damnit Apple.

Why can't they just add this for the iPhone... I'm so sick of the 12 app per folder limit.

Because of the different screen size and all the problems (and fragmentation of iOS) that arise if they'd implement it?

screen size ipad: 9.7 inches
screen size iphone: 3.5 inches

C'mon people, think...

 

[manu chao]

The OS does not kill apps in the multitasking tray to free up RAM judiciously enough, and so a task manager is needed given there's no other way to close an app.

The best solution is not a better UI for killing apps (this is the faster horse argument) but an OS that gives more priority to the front-most app.

Your wish is like having better car jacks to make changing a blown tire easier instead of having better tires in the first place.

 

[Phil A.]

I believe they ARE running. Because I can close them one by one and watch my RAM (wired, free, all of it) go up. Isn't that solid proof that they're running and not just in suspended animation?

No, it's proof that iOS hasn't released the memory yet. If you start something that genuinely does run in the background (like spotify) and then switch to a process viewer, you will see the spotify process still listed. This means it is still running. However, if you start something that doesn't support background processing then its process won't be listed, meaning it's not running any more.

 

[Stella]

you should really read up on the multitasking on iOS before making ill informed comments. the bar is a fast app launcher, kinda like a recently used apps list. thats all it is, the apps aren't running, they carry on from where they are as when you leave, they go into a suspended state. only apps that are doing background audio, using location services, task completion etc (ie using one of the 7 background API's) are actually still running.

the fact that closing some and you go back into your game and works fine is just coincedence most likely, or a placebo effect. could be coming out the app and going back in just sorts that app out.

I know those apps are suspended and persisted to disk ( I use 'suspended' to describe this mechanism in an earlier post ) , but you know what - all this is very much a task manager in another form... running app vs suspended app / list of running apps vs list of suspended apps persisted to disk

I have to remove them from the 'Multi-task bar' manually, i.e., close the application - to remove them from their persisted state. Managing a list of suspended applications that are persisted to disk.

All of this is very much task manager like... very much the same, different strategy of keep an application 'open' to allow you to return and continue from where you left off. I don't understand how people think the "Multitask-bar" is not a task manager.

And no, they aren't some placebo affect when starting the application from the suspended state because these games start from the start when launching from a clean slate.

 

[andiwm2003]

That just plain sucks. I have no iMac. Only the base station and a MBP. I don't want to wake the MBP every time I want to print a page.

Are there good third party solutions that allow to print directly via wifi from all/most apps?

You can "re-share" the printer from a mac.

Then it'll work.

That is just a lousy workaround. If I'm not home and have my MBP with me nobody can print via iPad since you need a computer between the iPad Nd a printer on an Airport Basestation.

I just don't get what the technical limitation should be. Why can't I just print wirelessly in the network directly through the router?

And no buying a new Wifi printer is not a solution. If I'm at a friends place I would have to tell them to buy a new printer as well.

 

[leodavinci0]

That is just a lousy workaround. If I'm not home and have my MBP with me nobody can print via iPad since you need a computer between the iPad Nd a printer on an Airport Basestation.

I just don't get what the technical limitation should be. Why can't I just print wirelessly in the network directly through the router?

And no buying a new Wifi printer is not a solution. If I'm at a friends place I would have to tell them to buy a new printer as well.

There's something I'm missing here I think. Everywhere I've read implies that you will be able to print from an iPad or iPhone to a regular (no wifi) printer if it is hooked to an Airport or a Mac. In fact, with the present iOS, there are apps that have given the ability to print this way already (e.g., HP iPrint).

From the site: http://www.apple.com/ipad/software-update/

"Print mail, photos, web pages, and more directly to a printer on a wireless network." This would include printers networked through an Airport; there is no stipulation about a Mac being needed for this, that would be stupid.