One last post. This is what I'm trying to explain QuadCityImages. I had to upload one of my prof's slides from one of my marketing course @ u of c. It applies to new technology. iPods, iPhones, iPads, Chromium netbooks, hdtv's, 3d tv, social networking, battery powered cars, etc.
Last edited by Flames0910; 04-08-2010 at 09:02 PM.
I realize it isn't using CPU cycles. If the app is not doing anything, why is it shown as being an active application in the dock. Just because I launched it at some point in time?
If I turn on my phone, launch the calculator and immediatly return to the home screen, why does the calculator show up in the dock as a running application?
Because you might have unsaved data in the app - for example, something you are composing, but have not yet posted, in the facebook app.
If I understand all of this correctly, all it does is just a simple "save state." Kind of like hibernating the app. When you bring up the app switcher, you get the ability to scroll through the list of hibernating apps and then wake up the one you need.
The only thing I don't get, is how can a hibernated app actually continue to perform a function (ie: Pandora playing music)? I'm almost tempted to fork over the $100 to upgrade my Apple Dev account so I can test it.
One thing that we can't really know until there are some apps that support background tasks, is whether or not deleting an app from the switcher actually closes the app, or just removes it from the list while still leaving it in its hibernated state. Everyone is pretty quick to jump on the "it's a task manager" train, but I wonder if it's really killing any tasks or not.
there is no way to respond to this without sounding like a fanboi but i'm going to try anyway...
people who jailbreak their iphone are more tolerant of the decreased battery life and performance seeing as they expect a few bugs. they know they're breaking the rules and don't hold it against apple if something goes wrong.
apple's really evangelical about the user experience. they've got a good reputation for it. that kind of branding is worth a lot of money to them. in fact, it's probably worth more than they get from a few "forced upgrades"
That's fair and true, but my understanding of the jailbreak multi-task is it keeps the entire program running in the background (very battery intensive). It sounds like Apples method doesn't keep the entire program running, just some functions of it, so it should preform better. If Apple's multi-task method is designed to preserve battery and keep things running snappy, required the extra processing power of the 3GS seems to go against that.
either way, i'll probably upgrade to the new version this summer (chose not to upgrade to 3GS since I didn't think the upgrades were worth it), just think it'd be nice to have important features for all their userbase. People are upset with Androids various OS's segregating their userbase, but seems like Apple does the same thing.
That's fair and true, but my understanding of the jailbreak multi-task is it keeps the entire program running in the background (very battery intensive). It sounds like Apples method doesn't keep the entire program running, just some functions of it, so it should preform better. If Apple's multi-task method is designed to preserve battery and keep things running snappy, required the extra processing power of the 3GS seems to go against that.
Yup. That's true. But we don't know what's going on under the hood. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even if its not an active process, that hibernation info has to go somewhere. Maybe the writing to memory is too slow on previous generations. Maybe there isn't enough memory.
I have a first gen iPod touch (no iPhone ) and I know that it isn't a very powerful beast. I'm really hoping for some new hardware this summer. I'll be the first person in line to get it when that happens lol.
As a marketing student I know just how valuable that brand experience is and why you wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize it.
Last edited by Flames0910; 04-08-2010 at 09:21 PM.
The only thing I don't get, is how can a hibernated app actually continue to perform a function (ie: Pandora playing music)? I'm almost tempted to fork over the $100 to upgrade my Apple Dev account so I can test it.
Multithreading...or callbacks into your app, as I mentioned previously. Either way, the apps that do make use of the multitasking API will have some level of active memory footprint. You can bet though that Apple will put stringent limits in place as to how much memory your app can have allocated when using the multitasking API.
That’s another reason multitasking will succeed on such RAM-constrained devices - Apple inspects these apps before approving them, and they aren’t going to approve apps that abuse and hog the available resources.
This one is interesting, it looks like the icon is shaking (slightly tilted) and the - sign implies that what, you can remove it from the list (closing it)?
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
This one is interesting, it looks like the icon is shaking (slightly tilted) and the - sign implies that what, you can remove it from the list (closing it)?
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Is it just deleting it from the list but leaving it in its background state... or is it actually killing the app completely?
Because of the way the multitasking works, killing it and putting it into its background state might be the same thing, it might be up to the developer to decide how to handle it.
When the app exits it can be serialized through the new API and put on the task manager, and then when it's launched again it just goes back to its original state. But you could do the exact same thing closing the app and not showing it on the task manager (apps already do this, though probably not as efficiently due to the lack of API, they still have to go through all the processes of launching the app from scratch).
But if you've got an app like Pandora that's actually doing some background task and you want to kill that, having something like that to kill it and kill its background process makes sense, without having to go into the app itself again. Though that doesn't seem very Apple-y.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Here's a couple of things trickling down from the 4.0 announcement and beta release.... The good stuff always comes after everything else has settled down.
The first one interests me the most, just because I don't really get what it's about. It's short, so I'll copy it here completely. It's from John Gruber over at Daring Fireball:
Quote:
Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig, from Apple’s WebKit team:
This is a heads-up that we will shortly start landing patches for a new WebKit framework that we at Apple have been working on for a while. We currently call this new framework “WebKit2”.
WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process. This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients to use it.
I get that it's bringing to Safari the same sandbox approach that Chrome has, but is that really what it is? It sounds like there's more to this than I'm seeing.
The other thing to talk about is the new language in the SDK that nixes Adobe's attempt to use Flash CS5 as an IDE for developing iPhone OS apps.
Quote:
So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe’s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage. If, say, a mobile Flash software platform — which encompassed multiple lower-level platforms, running on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry — were established, that app market would not give people a reason to prefer the iPhone.
And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple’s control. Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.
So from Apple’s perspective, changing the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to prohibit the use of things like Flash CS5 and MonoTouch to create iPhone apps makes complete sense. I’m not saying you have to like this. I’m not arguing that it’s anything other than ruthless competitiveness. I’m not arguing (up to this point) that it benefits anyone other than Apple itself. I’m just arguing that it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.
Flash CS5 and MonoTouch aren’t so much cross-platform as meta-platforms. Adobe’s goal isn’t to help developers write iPhone apps. Adobe’s goal is to encourage developers to write Flash apps that run on the iPhone (and elsewhere) instead of writing iPhone-specific apps. Apple isn’t just ambivalent about Adobe’s goals in this regard — it is in Apple’s direct interest to thwart them.
Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
But really, if Flash CS5 or or MonoTouch create a codebase that compiles and makes a native iPhone app, and you don't tell them that's what you are doing, how are they going to know? You might have to run your code through some kind of obfuscation tool to remove patterns that are common to those tools.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Because you might have unsaved data in the app - for example, something you are composing, but have not yet posted, in the facebook app.
Applications can already save their state. You can open facebook, start a post go to my email, copy a link, go back to facebook and my post is still there. That's not multitasking.
But currently to do that each app developer would develop their own way of saving the state of their app and restoring it when the app re-launches, and the app would be launching from ground zero each time.
With the new API this isn't required.
It kind of is real multitasking too, because in a "real" OS the processor can actually only handle one thing at a time so multitasking is in actual fact just switching between lots of different threads really fast, and when a thread isn't actually being processed the state is swapped out and it just sits there. The difference here is that the swapping in and out process is being instigated by the user and GUI rather than the thread scheduler built into the OS.
But that's stretching the definition of multitasking a bit far I guess.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Awesome. Why don't you do that in an Android thread? I'm pretty sure your little robot phone has the ability to create a new thread.
Don't chase the guy out of the thread. People are allowed to have a negative opinion. Personally, I like to read opinions from both sides when I haven't made up my mind yet. Trying to crush all dissenting opinion gives Apple fans a bad name -- and I say this as an iPhone fan and owner...
The Following User Says Thank You to BlackEleven For This Useful Post:
I get that it's bringing to Safari the same sandbox approach that Chrome has, but is that really what it is? It sounds like there's more to this than I'm seeing.
From the description all he's really saying is that the web content will live in a separate process. One advantage that immediately springs to mind is that if the browser crashes, it can be restored almost instantaneously without having to reload any content.
It's probably been covered already but it'll be easier to ask again than try to track it down in here: The iPad doesn't get the multi-tasking upgrades that the iPhone is at this time, correct? Was any timeline given or even suggested for its upgrade?
) and I know that it isn't a very powerful beast. I'm really hoping for some new hardware this summer. I'll be the first person in line to get it when that happens lol.
