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Ok, the multitasking on iPads is moot, the OP stated he doesn't want an iPad 2, though given it's current price I would seriously reconsider. The top Android tablet is the Asus Prime TF201 but is pricey at £499 (32GB), the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a great device but is poor value now at £399 (16GB). I think the best Android Tablet is the Asus Transformer TF101 and can be had for £290 (16GB). But if I was in the market again, I probably would have bought the iPad2 at £329.
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From: Overdosed on LCD
Of course it is, but Tony's too deep now to admit it. Quite hilarious, not even Apple could get away with having multiple pages and advertising campaigns based on Multitasking if it couldn't do it. Tony will no doubt come back with "On the same screen" now.
More Lemons Tony?
More Lemons Tony?
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From: Overdosed on LCD
Here's an excerpt
Five classes of apps - audio, GPS, VOIP, Newsstand and accessory apps - and some built-in apps such as Mail may run indefinitely in the background until they complete their task.
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So you didnt read the lot did you? god someone else as stupid as Jack 
Ok do you get that bit?
That bit sunk in?
You do understand that being updated is a background task, it doesnt mean the app is "active", totally the opposite.
If you cannot understand the basics, both you and jack, then go read up about it, the device is somewhat more complex than you think, it has in built programs in chips for audio/GPS/Data and voice, these can all work independantly because they are "SEPERATE", so to try to teach you, I have to drop to your level of thinking, or lack of.
This is why the likes of "voip", "gps", "updates", can still run, but you will find that the skype will be in an inactive state until it has a request for a call incoming, and trust me, if you are lost on these basics then no way in hell will you understand call setup
So the conclusion is, it doesnt multi task, ive even asked Jack twice now to prove it on his ipad, but seems he refuses to do that because he doesnt want egg on his face
Ok do you get that bit?
That bit sunk in?
You do understand that being updated is a background task, it doesnt mean the app is "active", totally the opposite.
If you cannot understand the basics, both you and jack, then go read up about it, the device is somewhat more complex than you think, it has in built programs in chips for audio/GPS/Data and voice, these can all work independantly because they are "SEPERATE", so to try to teach you, I have to drop to your level of thinking, or lack of.
This is why the likes of "voip", "gps", "updates", can still run, but you will find that the skype will be in an inactive state until it has a request for a call incoming, and trust me, if you are lost on these basics then no way in hell will you understand call setup
So the conclusion is, it doesnt multi task, ive even asked Jack twice now to prove it on his ipad, but seems he refuses to do that because he doesnt want egg on his face
Listen and digest, if I want, I can write an application on the iPad/iPhone that stays running forever, in the background, fact. I can tell iOS that my app will indeed shut down in 10 minutes, but I can use features given to me by Apple to make my app run for longer, forever in fact, much like a route navigating app wouldnt shut down after 10 minutes, or a voip app.
No matter what you say, or claim about apple hardware, you clearly dont know your **** from your elbow when it comes to app development on any platform let alone iOS. If said app isnt running in the background, how the HELL do you think the route navigation calculations are being performed, by some mystical piece of hardware? Has the penny dropped yet? Thats right, its being performed by the very application that was put into the background in a RUNNING STATE.
If I want, I can make a youtube app, that stays running in the background, and preloads the stream, for 10 minutes or 10 hours, I have that ability, as does the device, because its MULTITASKING. iOS is afterall based on Unix.
However, now here's the bit you need to grasp, and I'll include it for completeness...
Apple would not approve my "uber youtube background downloading" app for general release, why? Because they want to maintain the best usability for their device. They dont want a device that has 20 things running in the background leeching cpu/power/net.
What you dont seem to grasp is that you're arguing about MULTITASKING when clearly you're talking about a GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE design decision. The app/document centric approach is a fundamental decision that Apple has taken through all its operating systems. It does NOT mean that the device is unable to multitask.
You seem to like throwing around the "stupid" moniker, thats ironic when you don't even know what you're arguing about...
Last edited by judgejules; Mar 30, 2012 at 05:27 PM. Reason: typos =(
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You can both sit there crying now straight from the mouth of apple, and I understand this far better than you do judgejules, you dont seem to understand it at all or the device either
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211
Oh and tell me where is says exactly that you are running 2 apps together, it doesnt
you have just lost this one BIG STYLE
Tony
straight from the mouth of apple, and I understand this far better than you do judgejules, you dont seem to understand it at all or the device either http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211
Oh and tell me where is says exactly that you are running 2 apps together, it doesnt
you have just lost this one BIG STYLE Tony
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Read this again.
http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misc...titasking.html
You just pick out the one bit, you need to read the lot, then understand the device you have, they are not all "apps", some of them have their own hardware or use different parts of said hardware of that device, hence packet switched for your voip can put it into a suspended state even though its in the background and when it receives a request it becomes active again, its not active all the time, packet switching doesnt work that way, same with location services and updates and your mail and the really bad way that apple use the GPS unit.
I really am getting tired of repeating myself here, even apple agree with me, though they call it multi tasking, it isnt.
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From: Overdosed on LCD
You can both sit there crying now straight from the mouth of apple, and I understand this far better than you do judgejules, you dont seem to understand it at all or the device either
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211
Oh and tell me where is says exactly that you are running 2 apps together, it doesnt you have just lost this one BIG STYLE
Tony
straight from the mouth of apple, and I understand this far better than you do judgejules, you dont seem to understand it at all or the device either http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211
Oh and tell me where is says exactly that you are running 2 apps together, it doesnt
you have just lost this one BIG STYLE Tony
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You really dont get it do you?
Read this again.
http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misc...titasking.html
You just pick out the one bit, you need to read the lot, then understand the device you have, they are not all "apps", some of them have their own hardware or use different parts of said hardware of that device, hence packet switched for your voip can put it into a suspended state even though its in the background and when it receives a request it becomes active again, its not active all the time, packet switching doesnt work that way, same with location services and updates and your mail and the really bad way that apple use the GPS unit.
I really am getting tired of repeating myself here, even apple agree with me, though they call it multi tasking, it isnt.
Read this again.
http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misc...titasking.html
You just pick out the one bit, you need to read the lot, then understand the device you have, they are not all "apps", some of them have their own hardware or use different parts of said hardware of that device, hence packet switched for your voip can put it into a suspended state even though its in the background and when it receives a request it becomes active again, its not active all the time, packet switching doesnt work that way, same with location services and updates and your mail and the really bad way that apple use the GPS unit.
I really am getting tired of repeating myself here, even apple agree with me, though they call it multi tasking, it isnt.
I hope to God you are trolling here, as I can't imagine you're being serious.
I dont care what the voip app does when its waiting for a call, it can fly to the moon for all I care... when you are ON a call and you switch to another APP, that right there, that's multitasking. Its not some magical pipeline in hardware that routes incoming voip packets from wifi to the earpiece for you to hear, its handled in the app itself, in the background, aka multitasking. While GPS is its own IC on the board there is no magical hardware that works out where you are, where you need to go and says "turn right in 100 yards". That's done in software, by an APP that's running in the BACKGROUND, and thus is MULTITASKING... I cant make it any more simple for you to understand...
I've known plenty of network engineers and telecom guys over the years that couldn't make fire with a match, so don't take it to heart if you cant understand the simplest of concepts of how modern computers work.
I don't care what magical hardware you think is in the device, or what other magical reference you're going to make based on the limited knowledge you have gleaned in your day job, you are wrong. Stop wasting my time, because you clearly lack the grey matter to comprehend what even you are saying, let alone others.
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I own an iPad and wish it would multi-task in the normally accepted sense.
As an iPad owner I cannot run several apps simultaneously, like i can on any other laptop or pc. Apple may like to call it multitasking but rationally minded iPad owners recognise that this isn't what the rest of the world consider multitasking.
Some of the blinkered Apple zealots are embarrassing to the majority of right minded Apple product owners.
As an iPad owner I cannot run several apps simultaneously, like i can on any other laptop or pc. Apple may like to call it multitasking but rationally minded iPad owners recognise that this isn't what the rest of the world consider multitasking.
Some of the blinkered Apple zealots are embarrassing to the majority of right minded Apple product owners.
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Well it's all very interesting this argument.
But can I develop an app that will continue processing data once I've switched to another app? No, cannot see how to do that.
Jules can you point me to the docs that shows you how to request this time to run while in background please?
Cheers
Ian
But can I develop an app that will continue processing data once I've switched to another app? No, cannot see how to do that.
Jules can you point me to the docs that shows you how to request this time to run while in background please?
Cheers
Ian
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I own an iPad and wish it would multi-task in the normally accepted sense.
As an iPad owner I cannot run several apps simultaneously, like i can on any other laptop or pc. Apple may like to call it multitasking but rationally minded iPad owners recognise that this isn't what the rest of the world consider multitasking.
Some of the blinkered Apple zealots are embarrassing to the majority of right minded Apple product owners.
As an iPad owner I cannot run several apps simultaneously, like i can on any other laptop or pc. Apple may like to call it multitasking but rationally minded iPad owners recognise that this isn't what the rest of the world consider multitasking.
Some of the blinkered Apple zealots are embarrassing to the majority of right minded Apple product owners.
App centric vs window centric has NOTHING to do with "multitasking".
What you are essentially saying is:
I own an iPad and wish I could run what I want when I want even at the expense of battery life.
So why didn't you buy an Android?
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Well it's all very interesting this argument.
But can I develop an app that will continue processing data once I've switched to another app? No, cannot see how to do that.
Jules can you point me to the docs that shows you how to request this time to run while in background please?
Cheers
Ian
But can I develop an app that will continue processing data once I've switched to another app? No, cannot see how to do that.
Jules can you point me to the docs that shows you how to request this time to run while in background please?
Cheers
Ian
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From: Overdosed on LCD
So I swiped four fingers on my iPad. Mail, Pulse News, Red Bulletin, Settings then Pocket Grib, App Store was next and it was the first to noticeably load, Skygamblers after that, it was ready to resume. All the time my music is playing and I've had various notifications. Multitasking.
OSX on the MacBook will no doubt move even closer to iOS multitasking over time, I already swipe between full screen apps on that and Launchpad is very iOS, Apature was running all day today for no good reason other than it doesn't sleep.
OSX on the MacBook will no doubt move even closer to iOS multitasking over time, I already swipe between full screen apps on that and Launchpad is very iOS, Apature was running all day today for no good reason other than it doesn't sleep.
See the code below, well here is an explanation....
1) applicationDidEnterBackground gets called when you guessed it, the app goes to background
2) then an asynchronous background task gets initialised, which as it happens is just a loop forever, whilst incrementing a count property, and then sleeps for a second, it is just a hack to show that it works
3) a simple viewcontroller looks back at the app opbject and slaps the value of count on screen
4) yep, you guessed it, when you go out of the app, wait some time, then come back in, it has incremented because the block is multitasking with everything thing else in the background when you app is not being used
5) you have 10 mins to finish your work and other blocks can run in parallel. I have not looked into the audio, location or device stuff in relation to this, but the code below shows that it can do it if it wants. Apple would not let it pass into their app store though, because they will only let those 4 or 5 types of usage that the last 20 posts talk about unless you were using it to finish off an upload, or something.
Have fun
EDIT:
Things to note :
1) when an app goes background and is not one of the 5 special types, it has a max of 10 mins to do any extra work it needs, it can run multiple workers during this 10 mins.
2) an app can stay alive forever if it is one of the 5 special types. One hack way to get around the 10 min timeout is to set your app as an audio background app and play a silent mp3 using coreaudio on repeat. Apple will refuse to put your app on the app store if you do this.
3) if you want to process pi to n trilliongazillion digits in the background and have it on the app store, then no can do, you are going to need something without iOS
4) if you develop an app that has location or audio stuff, and there is a legit reason for it to run in the background, you only need to set up some strings in the app.plist file, and job done
5) all these limitations are placed on devs so we dont turn the iphone/ipad into a hack fest, silently sending out messages and location info, while it continues to buffer a 2hr movie whilst you are on 10% battery.
6) these limitations present a user experience that on face value is not multitasking in the sense we are used to with desktop machines. However it does multitask as an operating system, but most of the time we only see the one thing at a time.
Richie.
1) applicationDidEnterBackground gets called when you guessed it, the app goes to background
2) then an asynchronous background task gets initialised, which as it happens is just a loop forever, whilst incrementing a count property, and then sleeps for a second, it is just a hack to show that it works
3) a simple viewcontroller looks back at the app opbject and slaps the value of count on screen
4) yep, you guessed it, when you go out of the app, wait some time, then come back in, it has incremented because the block is multitasking with everything thing else in the background when you app is not being used
5) you have 10 mins to finish your work and other blocks can run in parallel. I have not looked into the audio, location or device stuff in relation to this, but the code below shows that it can do it if it wants. Apple would not let it pass into their app store though, because they will only let those 4 or 5 types of usage that the last 20 posts talk about unless you were using it to finish off an upload, or something.
Have fun
EDIT:
Things to note :
1) when an app goes background and is not one of the 5 special types, it has a max of 10 mins to do any extra work it needs, it can run multiple workers during this 10 mins.
2) an app can stay alive forever if it is one of the 5 special types. One hack way to get around the 10 min timeout is to set your app as an audio background app and play a silent mp3 using coreaudio on repeat. Apple will refuse to put your app on the app store if you do this.
3) if you want to process pi to n trilliongazillion digits in the background and have it on the app store, then no can do, you are going to need something without iOS
4) if you develop an app that has location or audio stuff, and there is a legit reason for it to run in the background, you only need to set up some strings in the app.plist file, and job done
5) all these limitations are placed on devs so we dont turn the iphone/ipad into a hack fest, silently sending out messages and location info, while it continues to buffer a 2hr movie whilst you are on 10% battery.
6) these limitations present a user experience that on face value is not multitasking in the sense we are used to with desktop machines. However it does multitask as an operating system, but most of the time we only see the one thing at a time.
Richie.
Code:
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
{
// Use this method to release shared resources, save user data, invalidate timers, and store enough application state information to restore your application to its current state in case it is terminated later.
// If your application supports background execution, this method is called instead of applicationWillTerminate: when the user quits.
if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] respondsToSelector:@selector(isMultitaskingSupported)]) { //Check if our iOS version supports multitasking I.E iOS 4
if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] isMultitaskingSupported]) { //Check if device supports mulitasking
UIApplication *application = [UIApplication sharedApplication]; //Get the shared application instance
__block UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier background_task; //Create a task object
background_task = [application beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: ^ {
[application endBackgroundTask: background_task]; //Tell the system that we are done with the tasks
background_task = UIBackgroundTaskInvalid; //Set the task to be invalid
}];
//Background tasks require you to use asyncrous tasks
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
//Perform your tasks that your application requires
NSLog(@"\n\nRunning in the background!\n\n");
while (true) {
self.Count++;
[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:1.0];
}
[application endBackgroundTask: background_task]; //End the task so the system knows that you are done with what you need to perform
background_task = UIBackgroundTaskInvalid; //Invalidate the background_task
});
}
}
}
Last edited by ramdor; Mar 30, 2012 at 10:46 PM.
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From: Overdosed on LCD
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So it can multitask, it does multitask, but only what Apple will let multitask.
Is everyone happy with that?
If I was to change my last post, where I have said Android can do true multitasking, I would now say unrestricted by the OS instead of true.
And if I was looking for an Android tablet for around £300 I would go for the Asus Transformer TF101.
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This is why Android tablets suck.
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewe...3D1,00.asp?p=n
Oh well, at least they have a load of ports you'll never use and Flash based adverts all over the place.
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewe...3D1,00.asp?p=n
Oh well, at least they have a load of ports you'll never use and Flash based adverts all over the place.
The OP said he didn't like Apple, yet here we are after 4 pages still discussing iOs and multi tasking which the OP isn't bothered about as he doesn't want an apple product
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Now where did I put it... oh yeah
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From: Gloucestershire, home of the lawnmower.
Richie, thank you for the code. Makes a lot of sense.
Of course, I understand why Apple won't let an app. like this onto the AppStore, for all the reasons that others have already discussed.
Just a shame you cannot write an app that runs always or can wait on an event always. I was looking to port some of the astrometry.net code over that would watch for images appearing in "Photos" or Photostream to plate solve them.
So yes, iOS can multitask but only certain types of apps. and only under certain conditions. And only for the reason of improving user experience (i.e. battery life, download usage etc.) rather than some hardware reason why not.
Cheers
Ian
Of course, I understand why Apple won't let an app. like this onto the AppStore, for all the reasons that others have already discussed.
Just a shame you cannot write an app that runs always or can wait on an event always. I was looking to port some of the astrometry.net code over that would watch for images appearing in "Photos" or Photostream to plate solve them.
So yes, iOS can multitask but only certain types of apps. and only under certain conditions. And only for the reason of improving user experience (i.e. battery life, download usage etc.) rather than some hardware reason why not.
Cheers
Ian
rofl love it !
hmm, not sure there is a way to do that sort of thing, though perhaps you could build it into some location based stuff that would continue running in the background. Failing that it would be a push notification setup somehow.
love it !Richie, thank you for the code. Makes a lot of sense.
Of course, I understand why Apple won't let an app. like this onto the AppStore, for all the reasons that others have already discussed.
Just a shame you cannot write an app that runs always or can wait on an event always. I was looking to port some of the astrometry.net code over that would watch for images appearing in "Photos" or Photostream to plate solve them.
So yes, iOS can multitask but only certain types of apps. and only under certain conditions. And only for the reason of improving user experience (i.e. battery life, download usage etc.) rather than some hardware reason why not.
Cheers
Ian
Of course, I understand why Apple won't let an app. like this onto the AppStore, for all the reasons that others have already discussed.
Just a shame you cannot write an app that runs always or can wait on an event always. I was looking to port some of the astrometry.net code over that would watch for images appearing in "Photos" or Photostream to plate solve them.
So yes, iOS can multitask but only certain types of apps. and only under certain conditions. And only for the reason of improving user experience (i.e. battery life, download usage etc.) rather than some hardware reason why not.
Cheers
Ian
Last edited by ramdor; Apr 3, 2012 at 12:37 PM.