The multitasking is nice for people like me who complained, though I wonder how everyone who was defending the lack of multitasking as a good thing will take it that the iPhone/iPad is now losing this 'feature.'
Update — services offered:
Background audio
VOIP
Background location
Push notifications
Local notifications (don't require the server)
Task completion (e.g. Flickr's upload can continue
in the background)
Fast app switching (storing/restoring app's state)I agree. I'm referring to the defenders. The people that were actively pointing to reasons why multitasking for the iPhone/iPad were bad for non-technical reasons (screen size, the UI, they didn't need it, etc.) There were lots. Every time multitasking was brought up, they would offer countless reasons why multitasking was bad.
Which was all just a cheap way to defend it's lack of multitasking. Multitasking was never a bad idea. It was always a missing feature. Regardless of the reasons for it, it's clear that they've finally overcome the problems.
Their inability to do so until now shouldn't have shielded them from criticism early on.
But it's not. And you can disagree, but you are wrong. The defenders I'm referring to were supporting not having multitasking; or, better said, were touting lack of multitasking as a feature. Their were other defenders who were for multitasking, but against doing it poorly. I'm referring to the former, not the later.
The lack of jailbreak/Android-style multitasking is still a feature. The fact that they took the time to implement it as carefully-designed background services means I don't have to deal with process killers and don't lose my battery to moronic apps that busypoll on GPS.
Or, as they said: "In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it. Users shouldn’t have to ever, ever, ever think about that stuff."
"The lack of multitasking is still a feature."
You added qualifications for a reason. Because they say completely different things. You seem to want to suggest I'm arguing against the first. I'm not. I'm arguing against the second.
The first feature is an app ecosystem that doesn't require me to babysit processes.
The second feature is the ability to do things in the background (or, more precisely, do things with more than one application at a time).
I don't care what you call them, but that the iPhone has always had the first feature, and talking it up isn't crazy. I don't think that it makes up for not having the second feature, but I still recognize it as something that makes my iPhone experience better.
I equate it to the result, not the implementation. I don't care how it gets done, as long as it gets done without ruining the rest of the experience.
Not too long ago, we were reading iPad reviews disregarding the lack of multitasking as unneeded. Comments would fill up with mac-addicts defending the lack of multitasking suggesting things like "How can you see two windows on an iPhone" and other crazy things like that. People questioning the needed for multitasking, as well as suggesting that no multitasking was a feature, not a missing feature.
So now everyone is looking at Apple's MT and saying "WoW! It's so amazing!" and the rest of us are saying "It's MT done for the iPhone, okay." It's what we've been asking for, and what so many people were saying to us "It's bad" or "It will hurt the experience" or "MT on the iPhone is a waste."
Maybe you weren't one of those people, but I had enough respond to me saying these very things. And it's just nice to know that Apple, in the end, agreed with me and people like me.
One: battery. They solved that pretty well by not doing true preemptive multitasking (I assume that it isn't preemptive, except maybe for background music). This is likely the right call too. Give apps access to the services they need to do what they want in the background, and keep them suspended the rest of the time.
The second is user interface. I thnk that their task switching solution is probably good too. It looks a lot like palm's, but with an apple flair.
You're right though... any previous defenders who gave other reasons were just deluding themselves. I think that battery life was the main factor. Once they figured that out, the rest became how to make it easy.
There were, however, people arguing against multitasking as if their was only one way to implement it.
And just like there were lots of people saying multitasking wasn't needed at all, there were lots of people saying they wanted multitasking even if it killed their battery life, they wanted the choice. I'm glad Apple didn't listen to either of them.
I guess you'd say I was one of them, but I'm still going to say I was right:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243742
There are both technical and UI reasons why multitasking as we've known it is hard to do on a mobile phone; those issues constrain what you can do when implementing it, and it certainly looks like Apple's done the best it can within those constraints (which looks pretty good at first glance, by the way).
Do you think the lack of multitasking is a feature? Apples introduction of multitasking... harms the platform?
"but I'm still going to say I was right."
Apple disagrees. Multitasking is a feature. The lack of multitasking wasn't.
You seem to be caught up on the implementation, not the results.
The "discussions", if I can be generous and call them that, have been ridiculous and transparent and usually runs like this:
Normal Person: The i<product> has no multitasking, this is a sorely missing feature
Rabid Fanboy: This omission is actually a "feature". Since Apple never does anything wrong, it's clear that this is actually just better for us. Besides nobody uses multitasking anyways, what could you possibly want to use it for?! Only crazy people want a computing platform that can run more than one thing. Besides Apple needs to keep the user experience perfect like it is (oh it's so orgasmic). And double besides, it already does do multitasking, Apple just uses it for their own things and keeps outside developers (who don't know what they are doing anyways, those idiots) from mucking up the precious user experience and draining the whole battery down in 5 minutes.
Normal Person: That actually doesn't even make any sense. There are plenty of examples of mobile platforms with multitasking that don't have any of the feared problems you are talking about, Palm, Android,...
Rabid Fanboy: THOSE SUCK! SUCK! <hits own head with closed fist over and over> <pause and takes a deep breath as if trying to explain some critical thing to a 5 year old> None of those platforms are the iPhone. NONE OF THEM.
Normal Person: Again, that makes no sense. By all appearances, the fact that this feature is supported just fine elsewhere, and not on the iPhone actually makes Apple look a little inept.
Rabid Fanoy: <head explodes>
None of the "rabid fanboys" have been claiming that multitasking will reduce battery life down to 5 minutes. Most haven't claimed that nobody uses multitasking; they just say that most normal people can get along without it.
The "normal people"/people who love to troll Apple users/you like to claim that Palm, Android, etc. have great multitasking systems, while ignoring the fact that those platforms do have noticeable UI lag, and generally worse battery life or performance. If you're trying to make a sound argument against Apple's stance of offering limited or no multitasking, you need to acknowledge the tradeoffs and then show that the stuttering, longer page loading times, or lower battery life are worth the overall productivity increase of multitasking. You can't just claim the downsides don't exist.
Do you even read this site?
Go look back at the last 6 months of posts on the iPhone and iPad. Nearly every single thread brings up this issue, and the fanboys come out in droves to try and explain away this lack of functionality -- most typically with nonsense arguments like I posted above:
- GUIs for multitasking are too hard!
- The battery will drain!
- The GPS will be pinging all the time!
- Nobody uses multitasking!
- I don't want a phone that needs a task manager to kill background apps! (I bet a whole Nigerian Dollar that we'll see task manager apps within 6 months in the app store)
- etc. see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240366
Now Apple comes out with multitasking (limited or not, it doesn't matter, just because Pandora can now play music in the background doesn't mean that Apple pumped their API full of magic pixi dusts where suddenly that won't eat away at the battery.) So now what do we see fanboys carrying on about?
<Backtrack backtrack backtrack, revision, revision, revision> Fanboys: We never said that multitasking wasn't important! We just said that mumble mumble. Besides it's not lack these are just background apps, there's a special magic API that developers can use that's so carefully designed and built by dwarves in their mountain code smithery out of mithril and fairy dust that it doesn't fall afoul of any of the problems we see everywhere else, like UI LAG!
> The "normal people"/people who love to troll Apple users/you like to claim that Palm, Android, etc. have great multitasking systems, while ignoring the fact that those platforms do have noticeable UI lag, and generally worse battery life or performance. If you're trying to make a sound argument against Apple's stance of offering limited or no multitasking, you need to acknowledge the tradeoffs and then show that the stuttering, longer page loading times, or lower battery life are worth the overall productivity increase of multitasking. You can't just claim the downsides don't exist.
My point is now proven. See your own comment. The OS upgrade and the availability of an API for background services doesn't suddenly free Apple from these constraints either. I think somebody here even made some claim about how other phone makers had a problem with location based apps draining battery by constantly pinging the GPS. Apparently he didn't read the press announcement where Apple allows for just exactly that function in background services.
Either fanboys said multitasking was a bad idea on a phone or they didn't.
And if they did they listed a bunch of reasons why.
None of those reasons are eliminated with this variant of multi-tasking.
sigh It's like fighting with people who suffer from continuous short-term memory loss regarding things they just said.
The fact that Apple now has an implementation does not invalidate them.
Does anyone know if this means any O/S object that broadcasts notifications via NSDistributedNotificationCenter (http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Coco...) will now work?
Previously there was no way to receive notifications from any other app or O/S process.
edit: That is if you believe the real reason was for performance. Personally I think it was half that, and half that they hadn't come up with a good way to present it to the user.
edit 2: I think this sums it up exactly: "(...) in multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it" - Jobs in Q&A.
Also, I already have double-home button mapped to bring up the iPod controls and go to search. I don't like that that'll be going away.
Though I'm not surprised that the implementation they're going with is allowing apps to have smaller background services instead of full on multitasking.
I'm gonna let them finish before saying whether it's the best multitasking phone of all time though.
Hopefully this isn't going to allow apps to just run any random equivalent of a tight loop of their own (memory chewing CPU and battery consuming) design.
I'd also like a reverse chronology notification history that pops up from tapping on the click.
To even call it multi-tasking is a joke.
What's so bad about that?
No, you don't. Just because an app shows up in a process list doesn't mean it's consuming resources. (Other than memory, and background processes are automatically killed as needed to free up RAM).
The reason is that intermediate users who know just enough to be dangerous think that they're necessary, when they aren't: http://droidtalk.net/should-i-install-a-task-managerkiller-o...
"Is it really necessary to be notified about every new tweet or status update? Reduce the refresh times on your social networking applications and reduce the number of items you’re notified about. Reduce the number of widgets you have on your home-screen, instead replace them with program shortcuts, you’ll still have quick access to your most used programs without the constant battery drain caused by continuous data pull."
It was never a feature, it was a choice to prolong battery life. We'll see if the other side of the tradeoff is worse or better on the whole once it is put in everyone's devices.