[Miko]

OK well the Pre's biggest + is what they call true multi-tasking not to be confused with the pseudo muti-tasking the iPhone has. So my question is if the the iPhone were to have this true multi-tasking what apps would you run together?

My list really only comes down to one or two Pandora or any app music/audio related and maybe Facebook (push may change this) everything else I don't see the need have running at the same time.

Thoughts?

[noleli2]

Yep, I agree. In my three days since becoming iPhoned, Pandora and the Public Radio Tuner are the only two apps I've wanted to run in the background.

There have been a few cases where it'd be nice if apps could recall their last state a bit better, but that doesn't mean they need to be running the whole time.

[Kickaha]

Hmm, I haven't tried playing an MP3 stream synced to it from iTunes - would that alleviate the Public Radio app need? Play it through the iPod app, and voila - backgrounding.

[Brave Ulysses]

the lack of multitasking as more apps come out that could benefit from it is beginning to become a problem.... the notification system, barely implemented yet, I think is already antiquated. Apple is going to have to add a bit more multitasking capabilities to the iPhone. There really is no reason an app like Pandora shouldn't be able to play in the background similar to the iPod app.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses the lack of multitasking as more apps come out that could benefit from it is beginning to become a problem.... the notification system, barely implemented yet, I think is already antiquated. Apple is going to have to add a bit more multitasking capabilities to the iPhone. There really is no reason an app like Pandora shouldn't be able to play in the background similar to the iPod app.

I think the problem becomes one of where you draw the line - I'm sure that the iPod app has been optimized to hell and back so it doesn't interfere with the frontmost app. Do you draw a hard line in the sand and say "Okay, we'll let you be backgrounded, but you can't use over X% of the CPU on average load, ever." Works great until somebody has an X+.Y% app that they scream bloody murder about, and try and get an exception for.

And then do you let the user run one of these? Four of them? As many as they like as long as the total CPU use doesn't go over X%? How is the user supposed to know that? What about battery life?

It's not nearly as cut and dried as it seems. I'd like multitasking too, but I'm a geek who can manage the resources on the device just fine - I can't imagine the average person being able to pull it off.

Honestly, I think the notification system for external communication pipelining is rather slick. Runs the risk of a single failure point, but other than that it's damned clever. But of course it gets raked over the coals for not being what everyone is used to. *shrug*

[ghoti]

Well it's a modal dialog that pops up - that's pretty bad. I have to say that part is really not thought out well, and I hope Apple changes that soon. With lots of apps using push, they will basically have to do it anyway, it'll just get too annoying.

The badges are great, and the sounds aren't bad, either - if used judiciously. But when you have lots of IM buddies and it looks like you're online all the time, getting a stupid dialog that you have to dismiss whenever somebody messages you is going to get extremely annoying. Same thing with a dozen or two different apps doing that to challenge you to games, tell you about new ebay stuff, etc.

Background tasks are a different matter, and also something I believe they'll have to figure out at some point. Whether it's music streaming, GPS logging, or something else. Don't know how they'll do it, but I'm sure they'll do that sooner or later.

[Miko]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Honestly, I think the notification system for external communication pipelining is rather slick. Runs the risk of a single failure point, but other than that it's damned clever. But of course it gets raked over the coals for not being what everyone is used to. *shrug*

It is slick and I can assure you that redundancy of the push notification server system has been well thought out and failure tested as well. Hell we do that at work and nowhere near the level of Apple's push. I think eventually Apple might add an option in the iPhone settings that will allow a few apps of your choosing to run in the background memory usage permitting. I see no reason they couldn't allow that.

[jdcfsu]

The whole background process thing falls in line with cut/copy/paste for me: it's a feature I'm not really sure why people complain isn't included. It's not something that I'd personally use at all and I can't really see why people get so bent out of shape about it. Like Kickaha said, Apple has more than likely optimized their background apps so that battery life isn't affected too much. The PR nightmare that would ensue when Joe Nobody's iPhone battery only lasts 15 minutes due to the 45 iFart apps that run in the background is more than enough reason to disallow such a "feature".

[Kickaha]

Wonderful article outlining some of these exact issues on the Blackberry: http://www.versatilemonkey.com/story.html

"There are lots of forum posts by people trying to figure out why their phone keeps running out of memory and needs to be rebooted. It's a large enough problem that there are apps for automatically restarting your phone. I can definitely see why Apple has been hesitant to open up background processing on the iPhone. It's really easy for bad developers to make the whole platform look bad."

[jdcfsu]

Originally Posted by Kickaha "There are lots of forum posts by people trying to figure out why their phone keeps running out of memory and needs to be rebooted. It's a large enough problem that there are apps for automatically restarting your phone. I can definitely see why Apple has been hesitant to open up background processing on the iPhone. It's really easy for bad developers to make the whole platform look bad."

Exactly my point. Nice find.

[Miko]

Pre reviews have pointed out how the OS suffers and slows with multiple apps running and even crashes so people have to be aware when opening multiple apps. Leaving that to the user sounds fine, but how does the user know how much memory a particular app uses before the OS starts to hang.

Apple will need to address this and come up with a solution that preserves the end user experience.

[Kickaha]

It's funny - a 128MB or 256MB device has several times the RAM that my early machines did. And yet it's seen as a limited device. Heh.

Of course, the fact that this phone in my pocket has literally 16x the RAM and 200x the storage of *my* first computer still stuns me.

And it has 2666x the RAM and 44444x the storage of the first computer I used that took up a desk.

[Xaqtly]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Of course, the fact that this phone in my pocket has literally 16x the RAM and 200x the storage of *my* first computer still stuns me.

SRSLY. I upgraded my first computer to 4 MB of memory which was awesome. My hard drive was a whopping 40 MB. Even the screen was only 9", and it was black and white. It's insane what a difference 20 years makes. If you think back to that era, could you even have imagined a device like the iPhone being a reality in our lifetime? I couldn't even fathom it.

Even the original Mac Portable blew my mind. It's a Mac… but it moves around! It runs on battery, for like 10 minutes! . Anyway yeah. In the context of recent history, the iPhone is astonishing. 32GB of storage was an impossibly large number not so long ago, never mind having it on a solid state chip. We're living in the future!

[bassplayinMacFiend]

No kidding! I learned ASM on a 512 byte Heathkit 'computer' which consisted of a hex keyboard and LED display (alarm clock style). My dad's TRaSh-80 had a whopping 64KB RAM and that thing ran VisiCalc!

[noleli2]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Hmm, I haven't tried playing an MP3 stream synced to it from iTunes - would that alleviate the Public Radio app need? Play it through the iPod app, and voila - backgrounding.

Good thought. I just tried that, and it turns out that streams are not synced to the phone. Bummer.

Sure would be great if Apple opened up some official way to allow audio streaming in the background. Pandora, Public Radio, and now XM are all available on the iPhone, so there is definitely demand. Tapping in to the official iPod app way of double-pressing the home key to bring up quick controls would be great, too.

And I bet most people use those apps in their cars, where they can plug in their phones, so I don't see it as a big deal.

(A 35-minute drive streaming Pandora over 3G — but with WiFi turned on — plus a quick phone call drew about 13 percentage points, which honestly is not horrible.)

[julesstoop]

Would it be a solution if Apple were to implement a limited set of optimized and specialized API's that would allow for a one or two threads of a specific program to run in the background. Of course these API's should in the first place provide for the most obvious/asked for background functionality.

In this respect one could say the push notification system is the first API in this class.

[Kickaha]

Good thought, and that's definitely one way of looking at Push API.

[Paranoid666au]

Apple could also build in a fail safe where the OS starts killing apps automatically if they use to much memory, CPU and battery. Perhaps a pop up message warning the user that an app is running awry.

Perhaps allowing certain approved apps to run in the background after undergoing extensive testing.

I'm sure Apple has already thought all this stuff through and and done testing and continues to do so. So maybe in time we might see something. Certainly as the iPhone becomes more powerful with better battery life background apps wont be a problem anymore.

[Miko]

Apple could definitely add multi-tasking to the 3GS, however the problem is the existing 2G and 3G phones. I really think if they are going to add it they will have to phase out the older phones with less RAM. Reading this article you really get a good sense of how stretched the older phones are compared to the 3GS.

The question is how to incorporate it into the OS? Apple loves CoverFlow, but tilting the phone on the side in most cases just changes the screen to landscape. They could also have you hold down the Home button for a few seconds when in an app and the screen could display the way Safari does with multiple windows open? oh, but that engages Voice Control? Damnit when all else fails just shake the damn phone oh right the iPod app uses that now.

I got it! tilting the phone from the home screen will show all the running apps in CoverFlow so you can pick and choose.

[joveblue]

Originally Posted by Paranoid666au Apple could also build in a fail safe where the OS starts killing apps automatically if they use to much memory, CPU and battery. Perhaps a pop up message warning the user that an app is running awry.

ARGH it'd be like Windows 98 all over again

The iPhone, including all apps, should behave as though flawless

Originally Posted by Miko The question is how to incorporate it into the OS?

A new "home screen" for open apps, between the current home screen and Spotlight?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Paranoid666au Apple could also build in a fail safe where the OS starts killing apps automatically if they use to much memory, CPU and battery.

There is no such thing as "too much CPU" (if something takes up a lot of processor time, it will simply take longer), and battery is rather subjective. As for filling memory: it already does that. When there's no memory left, processes are killed. Not like there is any alternative to that, either, since the iPhone doesn't have virtual memory.

[MBHockey]

I would like to see a 2 finger swipe activate an exposé-like shrinking of app "windows", if we had multitasking.

Cards on the Pre seems no faster than closing and opening an app on the iPhone. I've watched youtube video reviews of the Pre where they have 4-5 cards open and it doesn't look that snappy to switch between cards.

[Artap99]

Originally Posted by MBHockey I would like to see a 2 finger swipe activate an exposé-like shrinking of app "windows", if we had multitasking. Cards on the Pre seems no faster than closing and opening an app on the iPhone. I've watched youtube video reviews of the Pre where they have 4-5 cards open and it doesn't look that snappy to switch between cards.

My thoughts exactly. Cards on the Pre are mostly just a different visual interface for closing something and opening something else. Granted, some applications will actually run in the background (Like Pandora). But with save states, the mail applications are basically the same. Especially on the 3GS. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone were more capable than the Pre in that respect, as opening mail, looking something up on the web (and copying/pasting from the web) then going back to mail would be faster with an iPhone.

[PKIDelirium]

I'd be happy if they'd just let major communication apps, like AIM, Colloquy, etc, run in the background. Those are the ones that are the most annoying to have to lose their connection when switching between apps.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by PKIDelirium I'd be happy if they'd just let major communication apps, like AIM, Colloquy, etc, run in the background. Those are the ones that are the most annoying to have to lose their connection when switching between apps.

I used fring as a background app (using the jailbreak tool Backgrounder) for a while. It worked, but every now and then, it would just silently crash, presumably from running out memory. This would work a lot better on the 3G S (where you effectively have about three to four times the available RAM), but the limitations are simply there.

I'm now using BeeJive IM instead, which has its own set of quirks (I really hope they're working on that), but most of the time works extraordinarily well. It uses a bouncer-style system — your iPhone connects to BeeJive's servers, and they connect to the actual IM services. This made push notifications trivial for them to implement (the infrastructure was pretty much already there), and it means that, should you switch to another application, or drop offline from cellular, or should something crash, you're still connected and will receive the messages when you're back up and running. In addition, only having one connection means less resource hogging.

So as far as those things go, I think the solution is already out there.

[MBHockey]

Yeah I too use BeeJive IM, and am finding it's pretty great aside from some instability.

The only feature I wish it had was the ability to go idle on AIM and GTalk. I think this is an AIM protocol limitation though -- i don't think any mobile phones can go idle on AIM.

I rarely use away messages so a lot of the time once i exit the app it shows me as Available for 8 hours. I'd rather have the option to set me as idle 20 min after closing the app (I know the auto-away feature is there, but i'm not really a fan of away messages )

[HOM]

I have the Solomonic solution.

Just expose a limited springboard with Apple's built in apps that are already running in the background.

I think the most common behavior is "I want to do X (listen to music, MLB app, IM, etc) and then check my mail, bring up a safari window, check my calendar, etc."

Just expose Safari, Mail, iPod, Calendar, and Phone and 99% of the multitasking problems go away.

[joveblue]

And then how do you go back to the app you were in before? (e.g. the IM app)

[HOM]

Originally Posted by joveblue And then how do you go back to the app you were in before? (e.g. the IM app)

It would have the same touch area that's green when you're in an active phone call.