“The iPad’s iPhone OS arbitrarily limits third party apps from running in the background after the user closes the app. But this isn’t because the iPhone OS ‘can’t multitask,’ as the iPhone OS uses the same preemptively multitasking Mach/BSD kernel as Apple’s desktop Mac OS X,” Dilger reports. “The iPhone OS is constantly running system processes that listen to the mobile network for incoming calls and texts, it runs an iPod process for playing back music all the time, it watches for background notifications being sent to idle apps, and there’s a variety of other things always going on. This is the definition of multitasking.”
Dilger reports, “The iPhone OS inside the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad is not only capable of this style of preemptive multitasking, but also employs multiprocessing, which allows different tasks to run concurrently on different processor cores… Apple’s secretive A4 processor in the iPad is actually a System on a Chip that incorporates multiple processor cores, each of which can handle simultaneous tasks.”
Dilger reports, “The final release of the iPad will undoubtedly introduce additional features that weren’t included in the initial presentation, just as the iPhone was released with features that weren’t announced at its original introduction… Developers are already privy to a variety of iPad features that have not yet been publicly advertised by Apple.”
Much more in the full article here.
Won’t stop the idiots complaining about multitasking…
Question: Is chewing gum and talking multitasking…?
Want a device that can do multi-tasking? Use a bloody laptop or desktop computer.
@breeze
“Question: Is chewing gum and talking multitasking…?”
It is but, then again, we all know more people who CAN’T do that than can!!
@breeze
“Question: Is chewing gum and talking multitasking…?”
No, it’s just rude.
People are still complaining about a single button mouse on macs….I don’t expect the multitasking argument to go away anytime soon.
I have a new magic mouse and was laughed at by some moron for still having a single button mouse. Showing what the mouse does and multitouch and all that was responded with another stupid response how their stuff was better on a pc….whatever
“Question: Is chewing gum and talking multitasking…?”
We weren’t allowed to chew gum in Brit schools years ago. “Like cows chewing the cud,” we were admonished.
But, OMG, there’s still no matte screen option announced for the iPad! Calamity! Ruin! Disaster! Armageddon!
Again, to all those Android, palm pre and BlackBerry users:
Why do you want multiple applications at once if you have only one screen??????????
You can still recieve messages from social networks via “Push Notification” in the iphone.
Invaluable fashion advice I received as a teen;
“No-one ever looked good chewing gum.”
Some apps allow me to email an article to others from within the app. Others close and open the mail app – very annoying! I’d like to see Apple require a more consistent experience for emailing & posting to Facebook. One that keeps the user in the original app.
two words:
battery life
’nuff said
It is annoying to be in an iSSH session and go “or crap, what was that from that email request” Then you have to re-connect and all that. Running Screen on the terminal side saves a few repeated steps, but I don’t need to wait to login again. VPN + 3G isn’t the fastest.
It would be nice to “multitask” with apple’s apps that are already running, like mail, calendar, iPod. i’d like to get into the real iPod interface instead of that little pop up with out closing the main app I’m using.
Why the hell does text message app take a month to load every time? and google maps, that’s another app that sits and chuns eve after you just closed it.
@ Troy.
People task switch faster then these iPhones. If i’m clicking away in a iSSH session, or playing a game, or listening to Pandora, if I get a text message or email or phone call for the matter, in order to read or respond, the app has to stop….. starting over my pandora, waiting to reconnect to ssh session, returning to my skee-ball all requires starting over from the beginning. Avoiding that would be a huge time savor and lower frustration.
Even on your “single monitor” desktop, do you close email to open firefox. close firefox, respond to email, close email to write a doc. close the doc to check that email message about some data your writing in the doc and reload the doc again? no, you minimize the windows and restore them.
The real issue is not CPU or battery. The apps can be put into standby if they are not network/device connected for the majority of them I’m sure. the few that need a network connection can keep some cpu time slices.
Anyone who’s ever jail broken their phone will realize the 3g and 2g doesn’t have a lot of ram. from my understanding iPhoneOS will kill unused apps to save ram for other 3rd party apps. iPod typically the first to go. If you’ve downloaded the “backgrounder” app, you’ll find bigger apps won’t stay running long in the background. with 128MB of ram, that’s not much to go around. the 3Gs should do this better. I’d hope the 4g phone has a gig of ram.
Lack of ability to run third party apps while running iPod/Mail/Safari/reader will dissuade some potential buyers. Whether you like it not or whether you are just bitching about what other people want out of the iPad, it is true.
Obviously, it is reasonable to expect this feature to be included at some point, probably in the next year. However, some portion of people will not buy it until they know that feature is there.
Of course, it is not going to kill the iPad, but I suspect that when this feature is enabled, iPad sales will get a very nice bump.
“Use a bloody laptop or desktop computer.” That’s the funny thing about sales – you WANT people to buy what you’re selling. In particular, you want people to be able to replace their laptop for certain things.
“Why the hell does text message app take a month to load every time?”
iPhone has a human sensor built in. If it finds the human “slow” it tries to compensate. Otherwise, it’s quite snappy. For it to take a month to load, iPhone must have you in “special bus” mode.
Hope this helps!
The reason why some of us complain and the “use a laptop” or “it kills battery life” or “there’s not enough ram” isn’t cutting it is that many of us have enabled Backgrounder with our jailbroken iPhones and use it just fine.
Chewing gum and talking is easy.
It’s chewing gum and walking that’s a bitch.
DRMSSDB “That’s the funny thing about sales – you WANT people to buy what you’re selling. In particular, you want people to be able to replace their laptop for certain things.”
Nope. You want people to by an iPad and a MacBook, and to minimise support. That’s what makes money.
I can chew gum, walk, wink, smoke, talk, scratch my arse (left hand of course) and make a call simultaneously. I’m a multitasking, multiprocessing genius.
Oh and I have a few petabytes of RAM and some ROMS I could boast about till the cows came home.