(Some) Multitasking Apps Coming to iPhone OS 3.0?!
We’ve asked whatever happened to the iPhone’s Push-Notification Service quite a bit recently, even secretly hoped they may find it too difficult and just start to allow some “favored nation” background multitasking…
Now MacRumors is rumoring that that is exactly what might be happening in a future firmware:
While we aren’t sure what the specific issues are, we’ve heard that as an alternative Apple is considering allowing apps to run as user selectable background processes. If so, this feature would likely come in the rumored iPhone 3.0 software update but would be limited to only one or two processes on current hardware. The next generation iPhone, however, would likely see less restricted background process support due to its improved hardware.
So how does that work for you, fellow TiPbsters? Better than Push notification? Worse? And is a few user-selectable apps enough? If the next gen iPhone allows more multitasking, is that a compelling reason to upgrade in and of itself?
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I can live with that.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Well if AT&T give me an upgrade and apple ups it to 32gb I will be on the line in July. My current phone will either be a backup or passed down to my fiancé’s lil bro
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I would like to see how they will allow you to select apps to multitask with. That’s something that I’m sure everyone reading this blog (and every other iPhone blog) thinks they can do in a way that would be perfect and easy for everyone, but which probably isn’t.
My guess is something like the Start -> Settings -> Personal -> Menus control panel on a Windwos Mobile device, which lets you control what’s on the Start menu. You get 6 or 7 items and if you try to pick more, the device pops up a message saying you have to deselect someting to select another.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I hope Apple has a way to display notifications for the apps running in the background, i loved how Pre handles that part!
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
apple needs to just steal the g1 notification bar i spent some time using my friend’s g1 that is the only thing I looooooooovvvvvvvvvve abut that phone. I hate how the iphone interupts whatever your doing to let you know something happened. But I will just wait and see this is really the 2nd iphone coming up so its evolving in front of us
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
There are really only a few apps that I would want to run in the background anyway. Otherwise it would just end up like WinMo where you have to micromanage every little app as it starts to bog down your device.
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
i’d be very happy with either. but i’d rather have push notifications than background processes, even unlimited background processes.
push notifications seems, at least on the surface, to be a brilliant way to get your notifications without sucking extra battery life.
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
They should just implement the same tech as OsX with a tiny carrot below the app that shows which app is still running and have the ability to shut it down when more memory is needed.
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
It woult be very interesting if Apple allowed daemon applications, so software like Beejive would have two processes, one, with very low memory consumption, would be in charge of keeping the connection and handling message receiving, and another one would be the full user interface, with the screen components that consume more memory (like images).
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
They won’t add a Windows-type Start Menu. All they need to do is implement a three-fingered swiped from side to side to switch apps. It could behave like Spaces.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm
@Steve: latest gen MacBook trackpads support 4 finger swipes to cycle through Apps, so that’s not only interesting, but consistent.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:25 pm
@ Amon
That feature is what caught my attention! I really hope that feature comes to the iphone that would be awesome for sure.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
There is really no point in running apps in the background UNLESS those apps maintain connections outside the phone.
So think Fring, twitter, skype and fifteen redundant always-on chat applications.
Add to that Nav apps, where people want to talk while pretending the iPhone is suitable for use as a Personal Navigation Device.
Then throw in a few monitoring types of applications, stock prices, server monitoring, ebay monitors, sports betting monitors, and maybe one or two i’ve forgotten.
Thats about it. Nothing else NEEDS to run in the background.
And ALL of these have the characteristic of needing to keep the radios on just about full time to accomplish their purpose.
Translation: Battery Life Disaster.
There is no signaling channel supported by the GMS standard or 3G standards that allow inbound connections to the phone that is not 1) already patent protected by RIM, 2) likely to meet with carrier approval.
So nothing can go to sleep and await an outside signal to trigger its awakening without maintaining a TCP connection which has to be refreshed every 12 to 18 minutes. This is why PUSH is so battery intensive. It has the radio up all night.
And polling a connection for activity is even worse for battery life than maintaining a TCP connection.
The inetd/xinetd daemon model of port monitoring (from Unix/Linux/BSD) allows one monitor to handle all incoming traffic and start/awaken the targeted app. This relieves each app from monitoring their own connection.
But in the best of scenarios, with TCP connections, you still have one app (the daemon) keeping the radios on 24/7 listening for that all important tweet.
So until or unless apple licenses rim’s side channel signaling technology (which essentially put one blip in the normal hand-set to cell-tower chatter that happens every few milliseconds which says “call home for news”), we are going to be stuck with TCP connection monitoring.
And that means the Edge, 3G, or WIFI radio has to wake up every ~15 minutes, negotiate a TCP connection with some remote server, and then pop the radio back on periodically to see if that connection has data waiting.
If you have more than one such connection, each will have its own refresh requirement, which essentially means the radios will be on 24/7. Result: Battery life > 4 hours.
Rims patents are sufficiently broad that side channel signaling over the GSM signaling channels is going to be hard to get around. And even if you did, you need infrastructure.
People with great expectations for background apps are going to be fundamentally disappointed. Vendors of add on battery packs are going to do a land office business.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
@icebike: Awesome comment, many thanks.
Streaming audio is probably the only other background app I can think of that there’s regular demand for.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
@icebike: Am not am expert on how things work, personally i have used winmo and it wasnt such a big problem, background apps werent bad without draining the battery on my Htc Touch. Also looking at Palm’s implementation on Pre I am convinced its not “impossible”. As for the battery life, I think most of us wouldnt need these apps to run the whole day. We ciuld certainly use the functionality for a few hours, i would want to have the choice of bejng able to use albeit at the cost of battery! as a consumer i want a lot, particularly useful features that are available on other “not so cool” phones.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
@Ana:
thank god am not alone to feel that way!
I hope there comes a day (soon) when a phone cant be called/ classified as a smartphone. I love my iphone for what if is, a good muiltimedia phone (std 3.5 jack + opn bluetooth would have made it great), combined with the best available UI but am really surprised (to put it humbly) when its called a smartphone. I definitely want it to become one soon though!
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I think a mixture of both background notification and multi tasking would be great in doses.
Really, the only things that need to actively run in the background are either music related stuff like iTunes or online radios, or online chat. Anything else should be smart enough to be exited and returned to from its last state.
Push notification would be great in the Blackberry-esque style for things such as twitter or facebook inbox messages for example.
Anyone have any ideas of what they want to see on iPhone 3.0? Both in hardware and software?
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Push notification seemed like a great idea and it dealt quite well with the power consumption problems. I don’t really see lots of reasons why Apple would allow for multitasking. Copy’n'paste would be a lot more important then running multiple applications.
But, if this rumour were to be true we must assume that Apple have devised a new battery for the third generation iPhone and that new battery is capable of mantainig the iPhone operation for at least one day and in the use cycle that contains calls, sms, browsing, music, faster CPU and, now, multitasking.
Also, if we are to consider multitasking we must assume that Apple will come up with a management interface that is unique, easy and stylish, just like the rest of the phone, which only makes me more curious about what they are developing…
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
@Manuel:
What good is copy paste if we cant have multiple apps running? If read something nice i like to ping it to my friends, i miss that after “upgrading” to iphone (it is an internet device!). For me and hoping many others, multiple apps ~ IM! Things i love to do on my phone: talk,sms, music, browse, IM. It would be great it if i xould do all simultaneously without having to exit any of the apps completely!
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I’m getting kinda tired a having these conversations on this topic. I love my iPhone but, it’s just a shame that we have to beg apple to create functions that so many other and older phones have.
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@Amon With push available copy-paste from one app to the other would be no problem. Let’s say you talk to a friend on a IM app and want to send him/her a cool link you got on twiterrific, you exit the IM application, enter twiterrific, copy, exit tiwtterific, enter IM app, paste it to your buddy. In all this time, as far as your friend is concerned, you never signed out from IM. In this case switching between running processes would have the same end result, just that it would use more processes.
The same workflow could be applied to other apps, say mail and Safari to search for a piece of text from the email.
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
@Manuel:
My IM app doesnt run when i close the app/ window (since closing the window equals exiting). And your steps might work when Apple gives me copy/ paste and push to begin with.
For the time being though am not too unhappy with my iphone, not sure to be able to hold it that way. Some of these newer phones are tempting to say the least.
I would rather live with a not too fancy UI than not having some of the required functionalities.
I am worried I cant get any decent functionalities out of iphone without a jailbreak which immediately invalidates any warranty/ support from my service provider
Disclaimer: This is a purely personal point of view, I know many iphone owners are very very happy, I dont hold anything against them 
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Push notification, as far as I can tell, wouldn’t solve the GPS problem: in other words, if I want the phone to keep track of where I am even while I’m talking on it, or the screen is off… push doesn’t help me. So I’d rather like to be able to run a few apps in the background.
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 pm
@Sean peters: Right, operators would better introduce their own service: subscriber could send a text to the operator with start ppint & destination and the operator replies back with the best possible route+map!
PNS for GPS would be a waste IMO.
February 4th, 2009 at 3:57 am
Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait till june and see what happens.
February 4th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Push email and contacts wreaks havoc on my battery life. I’d hate PNS just to get the occasional instant message.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
@ Amon Jailbreaking does not invalidate warranty coz you restore original software (ipsw) b4 you take it back to them (apple). Of course “there are to risks to jailbreaking” and apple uses this phrase as a scare tactic to prevent people from doing so, but the risks are ALMOST non-existent these days coz the iphone dev team has been doing it for a while now. I have personally jailbroken 4 devices (ipod 1g. iphone 2g, iphone 3g x2), and have done so multple times coz of updates to software/ firmware without any probs. The only downside is it slows the phone down slighty (if you run winterboard etc). The battery was not affected in a way that was noticeable but that depends on what you choose to install/run. The upside can be found at (http://modmyi.com/cydia/search.php), keep in mind not all the repositories are present here, so certain packages might not be present also. I only posted this comment because buying the iphone was like a kick in the teeth that leaves a very sour taste in your mouth and jailbreaking helps ease the pain (if only a little).
May 3rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
No background apps is currently iphones worst feature and its a show stopprr