Multitasking---wish there was a way to disable

[yankintx]

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?

Are you kidding? Next you'll complain that the higher resolution makes some apps look grainy!

Now I have heard it all.....

 

[LoganT]

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.

Actually I'm pretty sure no battery life is used as well as no processor power. The fast app switching works because it's suspended in memory.

 

[badpinoy]

you know you can shut down programs in the multitasking tool bar. it is an extra step, but it is needed. i remember reading a couple of threads were ip4 would flash the temperature warning. i think this was due to the face that a GPS app was left open. on my 3g when i'm running tomtom the phone is always runs a little hot. oh to close an application on the multitasking toolbar simply just hold the app icon down. A small "do not enter" icon will pop on the left hand side and you just tap the icon. simple as that.

 

[redscull]

So instead of blaming Apple on a "poorly" designed feature - contact that particular developer?

Read my posts? I stated very clearly that, in most cases, it's Apple's apps that interact with multi-tasking in a sub-par manner. So by complaining to Apple about the poorly designed multi-tasking, I am in fact complaining to the developer. They're one in the same.

Actually I'm pretty sure no battery life is used as well as no processor power. The fast app switching works because it's suspended in memory.

You're not understanding the full rammifications of this issue. Even when an app is just suspended in memory, the fact that it's using memory often shoves something else out of memory. Like Safari.

Instead of opening Safari and seeing the page I last had open still in front of me, Safari has to re-download the whole page because some other more-recently minimized app, probably a game, forced Safari to give up its RAM. That means using my 3G connection, and that eats up a lot of battery (relatively speaking). And now Safari's RAM needs will probably push that game out of RAM, so it's not going to quick launch anyway. Net effect is that nothing quick launches, and I waste battery and bandwidth re-downloading stuff I already had downloaded. All because I couldn't just close the game I knew I was done playing.

 

[COSWORTH]

or it could be toggled just like the push notifications...

 

[SpankWare]

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.

I guess this just proves the fact that each individual is just that, individual. As a software engineer and power user myself, I find no faults with the multitasking system and fortunately I don't have the same issues as you. My multitasking works just as designed and I for one am grateful for it. I eagerly await updates on all my apps that are not yet multitasking aware. I find app load times to be even more annoying now that half my apps don't have to reload. As for Safari reloading pages, that's just a fact of life. I've easily adjusted to that over the last three years. I would have traded webpage reloads for faster app load times years ago. At least now I have significantly more bandwidth over my original phone so even reloading pages is trivial at most.

I must say I enjoy reading the threads discussing multitasking where terms like "minimize" are used so freely when these archaic concepts don't really exist in iOS4.

 

[skillz1318]

HAHAHA I had to read this thread after seeing the title.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't want faster loading of apps you frequently use, but I guess some people don't understand how apple implemented this feature.

You just use the phone as if there wasn't multi asking.

If a developer isnt using it correctly that's their problem not apple's.

There is minimum battery drain....

What app do you prefer not allows multitasking so it loads up slower? Or forces you to start over again since last use?

 

[Bathplug]

It can be disabled.

1. Download iFile from Cydia
2. Open iFile and locate /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/N72AP.plist
3. Find the multitasking parameters
4. Touch the "Edit" button
5. To disable the feature, change true/ to false/
6. To enable the feature, change false/ to true/
7. Touch the "Done" button, then touch the "Save button"
8. Restart your iPhone

Your Welcome.

 

[COSWORTH]

It can be disabled.

1. Download iFile from Cydia
2. Open iFile and locate /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/N72AP.plist
3. Find the multitasking parameters
4. Touch the "Edit" button
5. To disable the feature, change true/ to false/
6. To enable the feature, change false/ to true/
7. Touch the "Done" button, then touch the "Save button"
8. Restart your iPhone

Your Welcome.

Would be great if you had the jailbreak for the ip4

 

[dejo]

Here's a quicker way to disable it:

1. Restore to 3.1.3.

 

[redscull]

I guess this just proves the fact that each individual is just that, individual.

Yes. I really don't want to take anything away from anyone. Like my opening line said in my first post, I just want the ability to close applications at the time I'm done with them. Give me the simple option to pick whether I'm closing vs. minimizing an application, and I'll be perfectly happy. Apple's current implementation doesn't give me any control, and the default they selected for everyone caters too heavily to iPhone 4 (more RAM, I'm on 3GS) and people who recharge their phones frequently (I used to plug mine in 2x a week, if that, vs. daily now).

 

[sadievan]

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.

Good post. I especially like your #C.

In regards to your #A, I would like something like when I tap the home button to close an app, it would give me the option to a) close or b) minimize.

 

[quotison]

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.

No, this is wrong.

The task bar is a quick-switch bar. You use it when you want to open a recently used app without having to go back to the home screen. Just because an app doesn't multitask doesn't mean you won't want to go back to it. I am more likely to want to use the app I used 5 minutes ago than the app 5 hours ago, so those recently used apps are first on the taskbar.

The taskbar is not a way to manage multitasking, because iOS multitasking is not designed to be managed by the user.

 

[ulbador]

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.

Assuming you have a phone that can be jailbroken, can't you just flip the same switch in the plist file that the 3G owners are using to turn it on?

 

[8mpg]

I think the real key here is not not allow multitasking on programs that are not yet designed for multitasking. This is where confusion and doubt comes in.

I have yet to find something on my iphone 4 (new to iphones) that can actually use it. All the games and programs so far have no benefit to the multitasking. If Im playing a game, it will switch applications (say a text comes in) but when I go back to it using the double tap, the program starts over from the beginning.

If the phone only allowed programs that had the true multitasking ability to be used for the multitasking, I think less people would dislike or be confused by it.

 

[redscull]

I would like something like when I tap the home button to close an app, it would give me the option to a) close or b) minimize.

No, a prompt like that would be obnoxious. You'd realize that quickly if it actually did that. Whatever the differentiation, it would need to be seemless and unobtrusive. A single press of the Home button should definitely either Close or Minimize an application, without further input. Apple thinks that the default/simple behavior should be to Minimize, so that's what a simple Home click should continue to do.

But there should be another simple process for electing to Close an app without it ever getting Minimized first. Power users might be the only ones using this feature, but its existence would make them happy without impacting anyone else in the least (unlike the prompt idea; that impacts everyone).

 

[cocky jeremy]

I like how you guys think. Assume that because a lot of people complained about lack of multitasking, that the TS was also complaining about it. Maybe he never wanted multitasking? Why would he want it off? Maybe to save RAM? Save battery life? Who cares WHY he wants it disabled. It's his choice to do that. I never wanted multitasking, and now that it's here.. i still don't really care for it.

 

[COSWORTH]

Another reason i cant wait for the ip4 jailbreak!

 

[asleep]

I'd like an option to disable multi-tasking, too.

 

[redscull]

No, this is wrong.

The task bar is a quick-switch bar. You use it when you want to open a recently used app without having to go back to the home screen. Just because an app doesn't multitask doesn't mean you won't want to go back to it. I am more likely to want to use the app I used 5 minutes ago than the app 5 hours ago, so those recently used apps are first on the taskbar.

The taskbar is not a way to manage multitasking, because iOS multitasking is not designed to be managed by the user.

I appears that you aren't very familiar with user experience design or user workflow patterns. Most users won't use the taskbar to run applications because the existing method, clicking its icon on the home page, is already so streamlined. Pressing the home button once and then clicking an icon that's always in the exact same place in a page of 16-20 icons is always faster than double-clicking home and hunting for an icon that could be anywhere in a list that only shows 4 icons at a time.

It's basic design principal that you should do something one way, and do it very well. KISS. The Home screens are simple and efficient, especially now with folders. We don't need a second way to find our apps. The taskbar is inferior to the home screen in this regard. And because it is a cluttered history of everything I've ever run, it's not even useful for helping me identify what's minimized vs. actually closed.

 

[aarond12]

The one app that I would love to have multitasking disabled on is Yelp. Its mapping feature does NOT update your position in real time, so "quitting" the application and relaunching it STILL shows your last position! I have to force-quit the application to get it to update.

-Aaron-

 

[iPhoneHome]

I never wanted it. Useless feature for me, more annoying than anything.

lolwut?

Just don't double tap...you'll never know it existed. Aside from starting Angry Birds in the last frame that you left it in. Why would you want an app to load from the start screen, especially while playing a game? Or how about playing music in the background? I just don't get it....*Kanye shrug*

 

[utwarreng]

I'm with the OP to an extent. I've wanted multitasking since I first got my 3GS, so my issue isn't with multitasking itself; it's with the implementation method. For instance, the TomTom app has no way to actually shut the GPS down (that I've noticed). Even if I just single tap the home button, it still keeps pulling GPS data for up to 5 minutes. On my 3GS that can be another 3% or so of the battery sucked down. I HAVE to go into multitasking and disable it, or it will continue to run. Very annoying. When I used to use backgrounder, I could single tap the home button to just close it out, or double tap the home button to put it in background mode. This method is one I preferred over the Apple implementation.

 

[darngooddesign]

I love the tray for switching recent apps, but then again I have no problem understanding that just because an app is in there its not multitasking. If I don't want to use the tray, I just don't double tap the home button.

That being said, I do think there should be a toggle to turn off the tray.

 

[tripjammer]

For all the people having multitasking issues...get a Iphone 4. With 512mb of memory and the faster A4 processor...multitasking is so awesome on this phone.

Also you have to be patient and let the developers update their apps for IOS4. A lot of them are not....