I wish i could disable multitasking, I really do not care for it placeholding where i was in an app. In several apps it is more annoying than it is helpful in others. Is there anyway to disable? Will this be a "mod" that jailbreaking could disable?
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Multitasking---wish there was a way to disable
- Thread starter COSWORTH
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There is a jailbreak app that disables this, I forget what it's called. I haven't tried it on my 3gs yet, but I'm tempted to as I prefer backgrounder to the way ios implements it.
You took the words right out of my mouth, however I never asked for it and do not really use it, I do not see a need to disable it as it will not cause an issue when using the phone, so not sure what will be accomplished by disabling it.
Yes I do.
Rather interesting dynamics of the Internet. Complain when you don't have something, then complain when you have it.
This just confuses me. The multitasking was designed on purpose to be as unobtrusive as possible. As a user you should have no concern if the app pauses in place or not. What possible problem would you have with it being more functional? If you have an app or apps that do not function as you would like then you should contact those developers to improve their functionality, but disabling the feature all together seems really short sighted.
People aren't complaining about multitasking per se.
They're complaining about its visual implementation on the iPhone.
Palm did it in a way that anyone can understand.
Judging from the feedback on iPhone forums, Apple's method can be very confusing to people.
What is confusing? I do not benefit from multitasking and would like to have a toggle to turn off. When I close an app I prefer it to close, and not start back where i left off. Multitasking offers no benefit to me, I would just like to disable unneeded processes/options.
No offense, but it still makes no sense. If it takes less time to start an application from a paused location than it does for a clean start there there is an obvious benefit, not just in time but potential battery drain. That's just the first thing I came up with. I think there are more benefits than you realize.
That's really idiosyncratic. No doubt there are applications that don't really benefit from multitasking and maybe they should be programmed to not save state (or have an option in their settings menu), but an option to disable all multitasking would only be used by a few.
I suspect that as developers and users get more experience with multitasking, multitasking implementation will be more appropriate and more intuitive for the specific application.
I like multitasking. I find it most excellent.
And threads like this make me laugh and laugh and laugh.
And threads like this make me laugh and laugh and laugh.
Nah, totally understandable and to be expected. Different people want different things. So those wanted multitasking were complaining last year, but those who didn't weren't. Now that multitasking is here, those who don't want are complaining, but those who did aren't. It's not like every single iPhone owner in existence wants the exact same things.
Anyway, regarding the case for not wanting multitasking - yeah, most instances can be resolved with a programming change by the developer. That's not under control of the user though, while selecting whether an app's state is saved when closing it is. So it'd be nice to have that option. For example, many news reader type apps only update their content when you first launch them.
I'm not familiar with the Pre, but I would be shocked if it addressed this OP's particular complaint. He wants apps to re-launch fresh every time. I doubt the Pre does that since that wouldn't be called multitasking.
Exactly what I am getting at.
A toggle to turn on or off universally would be a very nice addition. The people that like multitasking would have it, and those of us that do not could turn it off.
I would simply like the ability to close an app vs. minimizing an app at the time that I'm leaving the app. Ideally, pressing the Home button would close the app I'm in, like it always did before. But I could double-tap Home to switch to another "running" app (or just click the home screen area), to leave my app without shutting it down. I cannot stand that the only way to truly close an app now involves so many clicks. It's tedious having to manage my phone like a poorly designed computer.
And to people saying I should contact the app makers.. most of the apps I want to close, not minimize, are Apple apps.. the ones built-in to my phone. I hate that the stock-ticker is slower to refresh now compared to when it always rerfeshed the instant it launched. I hate that settings don't start out at the root level every time I open them now, making it take more steps to navigate to where I wanted. I hate that the email app runs in the background, checking for messages, wasting my battery, cpu, and bandwidth, unless I manually kill it. I hate that the texting app restores exactly where I was, with the stupid keyboard still blocking my entire screen; because there is no button to collapse the keyboard, I used to exit/re-enter the app to hide it, but that workflow is broken now.
I don't think that people who wanted multi-tasking are whining now that it's here. Not just because it's here. We're whining because of how poorly it was implemented. Seriously, Microsoft did a better job in regards to multi-tasking and window-management with Windows 3.11 over 15 years ago. This is the worst UI design I've seen from Apple. Ever. It's pitiful.
A) At the time of wanting to leave an app, I should be able to easily close it or minimize it using a similar number of keystrokes. I should not have to (1) tap Home to minimize, (2) double-tap Home to bring up my task bar, (3) scroll to its icon, (4) hold down the icon to make it wiggle, (5) tap its X to close it for real, and (6) tap out to leave the task bar.
B) Apps which don't really run in the background or support any kind of quick re-launch should not stay in my task bar, even if I "minimize" them. An icon's presence in the taskbar should be indicative that it's still running, or cached, or otherwise in a state which is meaningfully different than "not running." An app with no multi-tasking support should never be in the taskbar. Period. Duh.
C) I would like a per-icon indicator on the taskbar which tells me how much of my resources a "minimized" app is using so that I know when it continues to use my bandwidth, cpu, ram, or battery in the background. I have no obvious way of identifying which apps are engineered well, and to make sure a rogue isn't churning my resources when I'm not using it, I end up closing all my apps all the time just to be safe. That defeats the entire point of multi-tasking.
And to people saying I should contact the app makers.. most of the apps I want to close, not minimize, are Apple apps.. the ones built-in to my phone. I hate that the stock-ticker is slower to refresh now compared to when it always rerfeshed the instant it launched. I hate that settings don't start out at the root level every time I open them now, making it take more steps to navigate to where I wanted. I hate that the email app runs in the background, checking for messages, wasting my battery, cpu, and bandwidth, unless I manually kill it. I hate that the texting app restores exactly where I was, with the stupid keyboard still blocking my entire screen; because there is no button to collapse the keyboard, I used to exit/re-enter the app to hide it, but that workflow is broken now.
I don't think that people who wanted multi-tasking are whining now that it's here. Not just because it's here. We're whining because of how poorly it was implemented. Seriously, Microsoft did a better job in regards to multi-tasking and window-management with Windows 3.11 over 15 years ago. This is the worst UI design I've seen from Apple. Ever. It's pitiful.
A) At the time of wanting to leave an app, I should be able to easily close it or minimize it using a similar number of keystrokes. I should not have to (1) tap Home to minimize, (2) double-tap Home to bring up my task bar, (3) scroll to its icon, (4) hold down the icon to make it wiggle, (5) tap its X to close it for real, and (6) tap out to leave the task bar.
B) Apps which don't really run in the background or support any kind of quick re-launch should not stay in my task bar, even if I "minimize" them. An icon's presence in the taskbar should be indicative that it's still running, or cached, or otherwise in a state which is meaningfully different than "not running." An app with no multi-tasking support should never be in the taskbar. Period. Duh.
C) I would like a per-icon indicator on the taskbar which tells me how much of my resources a "minimized" app is using so that I know when it continues to use my bandwidth, cpu, ram, or battery in the background. I have no obvious way of identifying which apps are engineered well, and to make sure a rogue isn't churning my resources when I'm not using it, I end up closing all my apps all the time just to be safe. That defeats the entire point of multi-tasking.
Some of you are really stupid.
Multitasking almost drains no battery life when you get out of an app - it is by far the best thing; simple to use, and awesome multitasking benefits. Most importantly, instant app access - no need to wait anymore for it to load.
Multitasking almost drains no battery life when you get out of an app - it is by far the best thing; simple to use, and awesome multitasking benefits. Most importantly, instant app access - no need to wait anymore for it to load.
redscull, I think you're putting too much effort into multitasking. The design of multitasking was done so that you wouldn't worry about those things. You need to have faith in the system and it's design and stop thinking about multitasking on the level that you are used to. This is a new intelligent system designed to allow you the functionality you require without all the overhead and thought that you may be used to. You should adjust the way you think and let the system manage the resources as it has been designed.
Maybe learn how it works before calling others stupid? Multi-tasking doesn't auto-magically give all apps the ability to reload quickly. Only apps which take advantage of this aspect, as programmed by their developers in an iOS 4 update, gain this perk. And even then, it only works if the phone didn't need to reclaim the RAM the app was hibernating in before you went back to it.
On a 3GS, it's usually the case that my "minimized" app had to give back its RAM before I got back to using it so I almost never benefit from fast re-launching in any apps that actually take awhile to launch. The only apps which don't get purged are so lightweight that they take only milliseconds to launch in the first place. It really is a worthless feature without more RAM.
Also, even minimal battery drain is too much, especially if it's a dozen apps all draining my battery. That can add up to significantly reduced battery life. I don't even turn on Push notifications because I don't like the battery drain, and compared to my friends using Push, my phone lasts considerably longer. I'm talking days longer. How much drain would you consider Push to be? Almost none? Yeah, if minimized apps use even half of what Push does, that's way too much to be worth it except for key apps I want to leave minimized.
Yeah, that's hard for me to do, as a software engineer and computer power user. I did try it though, as hard as it was. And it doesn't work for me. I don't like the reduced battery life (not theoretical, I can tell the difference). And I hate that, now that I have apps which really do minimize/hibernate, Safari's RAM gets purged before other apps, meaning I have to suffer a page reload pretty much every time I go into it. If I could actually close my other apps when leaving them, since I almost never care about minimizing games, I could ensure that Safari, the one app I really want to minimize, would still have its pages in memory. Safari reloading a page, particularly a big one, wastes my time, my no-longer-unlimited bandwidth, and my battery.. all because Angry Birds now minimizes instead of closing when I leave it.
I agree that the design should have been such that I shouldn't have to worry about it. But they failed at that. The design was done so poorly that now I'm forced to deal with it frequently.
So instead of blaming Apple on a "poorly" designed feature - contact that particular developer?
And on the battery issue; the app is suspended, so like .001% of battery life might be used.