When itintroduced the iPhone O 4.0Thursday , Apple showcased seven “ tentpoles ” that foreground some of the major additions to the iPhone OS . Based on what took center leg on Thursday , this update to the iPhone operating system is a six - sided tent with a really big rod smooch in the middle : multitasking .
This long - await characteristic will finally get in with iPhone OS 4.0 , but it ’s a much more pernicious and deliberate implementation than most users might expect . Apple is attain the visual aspect of multitasking — the power to draw more than one program at a time — through a combining of app - throw features and screen background processes managed by the operating arrangement itself . What isnotbeing added to iPhone OS 4.0 is the more traditional construct of apps running , full bore , whether you could see that or not .
“ [ Multitasking ] is really easy to apply in a manner that drains battery life . It ’s well-fixed to do it in a way that reduces the performance of the foreground app and makes the phone feel inert , ” Steve Jobs told reporters on Thursday . “ We ’ve figured out how to do it and avoid these things . ”
The app switcher appears below your app when you tap twice on the iPhone’s Home button.
Context switching
When masses kvetch that the iPhone does n’t do multitasking , that does n’t of necessity mean they ’re desperate for a crew of apps to lead on their iPhone at the same time . ( Sometimes they do ; more on that in a moment . ) No , a major productivity hurdle on the iPhone is the fact that sometimes a user needs to use several apps to perform a chore — for model , switching among Mail , Safari and Notes while researching a memo — and swap rapidly between apps is just not something the iPhone handles well . You have to press the nursing home clit , find the next app among your nursing home CRT screen , then launch that new app , pilot to where you want it to be , and then repeat the cognitive process to switch back .
The app switcher appear below your app when you tip doubly on the iPhone ’s Home release .
So when Apple say it ’s added multitasking to iPhone OS 4.0 , one of the big thing it ’s added is really smarter appswitching . When you double - press on the Home button , a windowpane raises up from the bottom of the screen , Dock - like , with a list of all the apps you ’ve recently used . When you tap on one of those apps , that app launch — let quick switching without going back to the Home screen .
Apple mate this with a young set of peter for app developer to allow apps to do something other than open and quit ( which is all they can do flop now ) . Now apps will be able-bodied to be frozen — Apple older vice President of the United States Scott Forstall say they ’re save in “ a quiescent state in the ground . ” The key to this state is that it earmark apps to pick up powerful where you leave them . It ’s not multitasking , not really , but it will satisfy the needs of hoi polloi who quickly need to flip between unlike apps without lose their place .
Background tasks
But switching and reconstruct only locomote so far . Sometimes you really do require an app to do something when it ’s not in the foreground . And so Apple is providing several other tools to developers so that apps can do task in the ground . One of them is intimate : the get-up-and-go - notification system introduced a yr ago with iPhone OS 3.0 . The rest are raw . A background audio service of process allows apps that provide sound , such as Pandora and MLB At Bat , to keep playing while the exploiter switches to another app . This service integrates with conversant control already in manipulation by the iPod program , such as dual - clicking on the habitation button when the phone is lock to take up pause , next and previous clitoris .
Another scope task support is Voice over IP , represent in a demo on Thursday featuring Skype . The Skype internet - telephony product currently can only send and get birdcall when it ’s the frontmost app . But by using the new systems in iPhone OS 4.0 , Skype and apps like it will be able to keep their connection alive when the user switches to another app , allowing conversations to keep on — and allowing incoming shout to still be welcome , as well .
Apps that want to know where you are will also get a boost in iPhone atomic number 76 4.0 . justly now , GPS apps and societal - networking apps with place - based feature only get it on where you are when you open them . After this software program update , GPS apps will be able to keep the GPS receiver in your gadget dynamic and cut through your location even when close up . They ’ll even be capable to remind you that a number is coming up !
Social - networking apps wo n’t have access to the GPS data point , due to the massive office requirements of using GPS . Instead , Apple has produce a system that will notify societal - networking apps when the iPhone has switched between cellphone phone towers , indicating that the user has changed location .
These placement features make out with a boniface of seclusion feature film , pay you ascendence over what apps can have it off your location and letting you specifically approve and cast out apps from using them . You ’ll even be able-bodied to see which apps have been peering in on your location in the last 24 hours , so nothing will take you by surprise . And a modest arrow will appear in the iPhone ’s status bar , right next to the electric battery icon , anytime fix trailing is occur in the background signal .
To go with the now - familiar push apprisal feature article , Apple has added a unexampled Local Notifications scheme . Unlike push notice , which require an outside server to send an event to the phone , these new notifications are rise on the phone itself . The deterrent example Forstall gave is that a TV - guide app could alert you when a favorite show is about to get down . This seems to be a way for apps to set alarum in feeler , for times when they are n’t running , another common understanding developers wanted the iPhone OS to have multitasking capabilities .
Task completion , another raw multitasking increase , solves a problem that you ’ve probably experienced on your iPhone : not know whether it was safe to press the Home button and move to another app , because the app you were using was right in the heart of something . Forstall used the exercise of a picture - uploader app in the middle of uploading an image to the Web . By using task culmination , apps will be able to fetch up what they ’re doing even when the substance abuser switches by . ( We assume this is a feature article that function hand in helping hand with the conception of going into a “ quiescent state in the background”—namely that apps are render a prospect to finish what they ’re doing before they ’re frozen in carbonite . )
The multitasking iPhone
So will these new features solve every issue that developer and users have with iPhone apps running in the screen background ? chance are good that there will still be sharpness case , certain uses of certain apps that wo n’t be solved by these systems . We ’ll know more when the update come this summertime .
But by introducing these feature to iPhone OS 4.0 , Apple seems to have addressed the most glaring issue with the unfitness of third - party apps to run in the background , most notably with issues of app switch , cyclosis audio , and location awareness .
