“Whereas the iPhone is aimed at short, focused tasks, the iPad is more likely to lend itself to longer, more general tasks that involve using multiple apps, just as we’re used to on the Mac. It’s easy to imagine wanting to use an iPad to read text in Mobile Safari, copy some text to a Pages document, and send that document to a colleague via Mail. That specific example may turn out to be possible with the current iPhone OS, but it points toward needing more ways for iPad apps to work together in the future.”
it does.
I’d love it to really multitask, but at the same time keeping the iPad predominantly single-tasking means it won’t supplant the Mac Book for a fair number of people. As such, yeah, to me it makes sense not to have it. Lets be honest – for a fair number of people the iPad could completely replace a computer if the OS was beefed up enough, but I think Apple would much rather point you at more expensive offerings rather than let you do that.
As I use various applications on my iPod touch, they work together in a limited way already. You can have one application launch another and apparently send some data. For most people, that should be enough.
I see no need to have an application with 40 processes that needs to spawn daemons to fulfill a handheld machine’s role. It’s not a Tricorder; it’s a simple handheld computer.
The iWork applications as well as the MS Office-compatible applications could have some need to exchange information, but multiple clipboards and multiple clipboard types should be enough, especially working on a small screen.
I dont’t think the iPhone OS is actually missing multitasking. It is just the app store apps that can’t multitask between themselves. That said… I think it works acceptably for a phone with limited resources and a tiny screen. However, once the device gets larger and has some horsepower, it really cuts back on the potential utility of the device to constrain it to one app at a time.
The iPad seems to be content consumption oriented. I need an iPad that is more about creating content if I were to embrace it. Hopefully there is a iPad Pro in the Apple skunk works.
Edited 2010-02-10 02:49 UTC
Funny.. I could have sworn that my iPhone ALREADY DOES multitasking….its a full blown copy of Mac OSX Unix running on there already after all.
My-iPhone:~ root# uname -a
Darwin My-iPhone 10.0.0d3 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0d3: Fri Sep 25 23:35:35 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1357.5.30~3/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8920X iPhone2,1 arm N88AP Darwin
Or is my “ps” and “top” commands output lying that there are already about 29 processes running and multitasking right this instant?
Processes: 27 total, 2 running, 25 sleeping… 119 threads
My-iPhone:~ root# top
23:05:38
Load Avg: 0.62, 0.62, 0.50 CPU usage: 13.08% user, 13.08% sys, 73.83% idle
SharedLibs: num = 0, resident = 0 code, 0 data, 0 linkedit.
MemRegions: num = 5665, resident = 100M + 0 private, 50M shared.
PhysMem: 46M wired, 38M active, 20M inactive, 248M used, 4764K free.
VM: 1364M + 0 35249(0) pageins, 38(0) pageouts
My-iPhone:~ root# ps ax
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ?? Rs 0:54.76 /sbin/launchd
12 ?? Ss 0:23.29 /usr/sbin/notifyd
13 ?? Ss 0:05.82 /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder -launchd
14 ?? Ss 0:25.71 /usr/sbin/syslogd
15 ?? Ss 3:11.85 /usr/libexec/configd
19 ?? Ss 0:00.09 /usr/bin/sbsettingsd
23 ?? Ss 2:05.01 /usr/libexec/lockdownd
24 ?? Ss 1:03.95 /usr/sbin/mediaserverd
27 ?? Ss 0:00.58 /usr/sbin/fairplayd
28 ?? Ss 2:02.55 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DataAccess.framework/Support/dataacc essd
29 ?? Ss 0:08.39 /usr/sbin/accessoryd
30 ?? Ss 27:42.01 /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SpringBoard
34 ?? Ss 1:03.66 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/Support/Comm Center
50 ?? Ss 0:10.22 /usr/sbin/BTServer
60 ?? Ss 0:08.42 /System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/SCHelper
64 ?? Ss 0:13.23 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ApplePushService.framework/apsd
76 ?? Ss 0:10.72 /Applications/MobilePhone.app/MobilePhone
77 ?? Ss 4:28.01 /Applications/MobileMail.app/MobileMail
81 ?? Rs 26:03.71 /Applications/MobileSafari.app/MobileSafari
7123 ?? Ss 0:02.29 /Applications/MobileMusicPlayer.app/MobileMusicPlayer
7699 ?? Ss 0:03.11 /var/mobile/Applications/9256CFF4-DFD5-4F81-8D28-55FFF8ACDAB7/Robtwitt er.app/Robtwitter
7701 ?? Ss 0:06.20 /var/mobile/Applications/491AB632-BE20-4AD8-BB04-AF9375398A14/eBay.app /eBay
7703 ?? Ss 0:06.48 /var/mobile/Applications/B1B047EA-5E65-4883-9F7C-B9CDB306E59B/CNN.app/ CNN
7722 ?? S 0:00.48 /usr/sbin/sshd -i
7724 s000 Ss 0:00.14 -sh
7743 s000 R+ 0:00.01 ps ax
Edited 2010-02-10 04:06 UTC
Actually I do not understand why Apple’s people added such artificial constraint to their platform: Darwin is full preemptive multitasking OS that handles SMP architectures properly; why dressing up their expensive toys with “poor man clothes”?
two processes are running, 25 are sleeping. 29 running processes would lock up your phone. on my lowly emac: 2 running, 75 sleeping. and i’m not doing anything complicated on it.
that’s strange! wired + active + inactive should = used:
144mb are missing in action in your iphone. maybe the memory constrains are what’s really the problem. you wouldn’t want your iphone to start swaping.
looks like three user-apps running at the same time. isn’t that exactly what apple doesn’t allow?
I don’t really think an OS that doesn’t have windows all over the screen, but instead allows/forces the user to see one application at a time doesn’t really need multitasking.
On the iPhone, as far as applications are concerned, you only do one thing at once anyway…
So, for the most part, multitasking for user applications isn’t needed.
Example…
I am using Pages on the iPad and switch to Numbers. As long as when I switch back (and the switching is fast) the content is as I left it, then I don’t really need multitasking…
But…
There are cases where it would be very nice to have. The first of course is a chat client. I’ve used them on the iPhone with notification and to be honest I’m not a fan, seems to eat my battery anyway and it’s slow (faster than not having it however ;-)…
If you had an application and you wanted to render something, then having multitasking would be nice too. While you wait or the render to be done, you could switch over and do something else.
I am guessing in 4.0 there will be limited multitasking, so maybe this is what they have in mind.
But for most things, as long as you can save state and switch back and forth quickly, then you don’t really need multitasking. Remember, the iPad and iPhone don’t use the concept of windows on the screen…
Streaming music while browsing the internets or playing a game. That’s something my G1 does and i use. Multitasking also allows for custom home screen widgets and background processes for things like twitter apps without using funny work around push notifications
FYI, you might have not known this but, the iPhone already can play music or stream music via the media player, or shoutcast, aolradio, pandora, last.fm, slacker radio, or any other audio stream etc.. IN THE BACKGROUND while doing something else.
Edited 2010-02-10 14:22 UTC
Steve Jobs should be quoted “There is no reason for any individual to have multitasking in his iphone” Strikingly similar to Ken Olson president, the chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) said in 1977 “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”… good thing he was wrong and ain’t around any more.
This is why I won’t ever get one, they keep trying to shove down people’s throats what they thinks its best for them… no thanks Mr. Jobs, freedom to me is more precious than [gollum]”..your PRECIOUSSS”[/gollum].
Ummm. He shouldn’t if he did not say that.
I am the owner of a Palm Pre with, of course, Web OS. Recently, I left my phone at a friend’s house who lived out of town. My father let me borrow his extra iPhone (long story about the extra iPhone, but regardless) until I got my Pre back. I won’t go into the whole iPhone vs Pre debate, but I will say I was very impressed with the iPhone compared to the Pre. Almost to where I’d prefer an iPhone over the Pre. But the one thing keeping me back? I love the Web OS cards and multitasking system.
I hate not knowing what’s open and what’s not. I hated scrolling through pages of apps to get to the one thing that I wanted (when it was already open). Plus, switching from app to app (again, once they are already opened) feels a lot faster on Web OS because I am just scrolling window by window. Sometimes, I don’t even need to make the app active because the preview shows me enough. It just seems a lot more efficient to me.
Now for the disclaimer: the Pre is my first smart phone and I never owned an iPhone (or even an iPod Touch for that matter) before, so I may just be very accustomed to Web OS vs the iPhone.
You can have all that the WebOS has and more. The catch? You have to jailbreak your iPhone. The multitask, cards and categories. It was great the I jailbroke my phone for a roadtrip from Cali to Virginia. I had TomTom, Trapster (police speed traps) and WunderRadio all running. Then accept a incoming phone call! “Can your network and phone do that!” Had to say it…..LOL
iPhone does have multitasking!
The news/comment title should have been: Does iPhone OS need third party background processes?
Or something like that.
This is OS news. Come on!
Well…….come to think about it…agreed!