- Posts tagged Multitasking
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Apple's iOS Multitasking: It's more than one app at a time
The philosophy baked into the iPad of one app at a time might be viewed as a shortfall in some folk’s eyes, but it results in a smooth, consistent user experience
The article explains how other tablets implement traditional multitasking while Apple does not, and it's one reason the iPad performs so much better.
My issue with this kind of thinking is that there's "technical" multitasking—the hows and whys geeks argue over—and there's "real world" multitasking—what users see in terms of having multiple background apps to which they can switch.
It's fine to point out that Apple's multitasking implementation is not the traditional one, but to essentially characterize it as "one app at a time" minimizes the excellent job they did. And it's not true. There are allowances for being in the background going on when it matters for an app. Apple's apps have had it since 2007.
A "technical" multitasker may find examples in Apple's implementation that do not exist in the traditional model, but that only tells us what we already know: the implementations are different. What's relevant is that the vast majority of users do not see a difference between the implementations when using the device. They did notice (in a few circumstances) when third parties could not participate, but that's long past.
It's not a question of traditional multitasking vs. one app at a time. The choice Apple made was to provide the overall benefits of traditional multitasking with almost none of the many drawbacks. It required re-thinking, extra work and, yes, innovation, but that's why Apple leads.
iPad memory usage optimized in iOS 4.2 Beta 2
This is good news. My biggest concern with multitasking on the iPad is that the relatively small amount of memory (half of an iPhone 4) combined with greater app memory usage (due to larger screen size) will make for a less robust experience than on the iPhone. Anything Apple does to tweak in these area could be a big help.
Developer Opportunity: It takes more than iOS 4 to multitask on an iPhone
When we spoke to a number of developers, that aren't keen to be named in this article for fear of backlash from Apple, they all confirmed to Pocket-lint that, for any app to take advantage of the new multitasking features, it will have to be updated. Furthermore, many of those we spoke to felt that many apps simply won't be.
Aside from requiring iPhone 4 or a 3GS, you also need apps that have been modified to multitask. I suspect quite a few won't, and no one will care or even notice.
I also expect a bonanza of opportunity for some types of apps to be the first to support it. For example, as much as I use Twitter I'll be keenly interested in a client that multitasks. Would I try a different Twitter client for this feature? Absolutely. Same is true of RSS/news readers, and chat clients, and notes apps, and others.
So, while I understand this is work for developers, it's also a chance to get their app back in front of people who had previously chosen a competitor. It's not often developers are handed such a key and much-anticipated differentiator to add to their apps. Multitasking will be hot; smart developers will grab the opportunity quickly.
