DISQUS

Draconis Software Blog: How Apple Can Support True Background Applications on the iPhone

  • graiz · 1 year ago
    Nice idea but the real issue is that too many application would want to run in the background.
    Facebook, Instant messenger, Geo-tracking applications, skype, Pandora, Torrent Downloader, Clipboard, etc.

    I think a better approach would be to allow time-slicing of any apps that want to run in the background. So only 1/100th of the CPU & Network can be used for background apps in total and if you have multiple background apps they have to share that resource evenly.
  • rtwomey · 1 year ago
    I agree, but what if you just limited it to one app at a time? Basically, you'd restrict the user to only have 1 foreground and 1 background app running at any time.

    I worry that if you use the slicing approach (which is perfectly fine in that case), you would find yourself getting into task manager territory.
  • Charles · 1 year ago
    I don't think it would work well. You have issues with memory and the iPhone doesn't have swap. Two large applications couldn't do this.

    I still think Apple made the right decision on this, at least for now. Once battery power is longer longer an issue (and performance to some extent) maybe we'll see background apps. Hopefully there will be a more elegant solution.
  • JanDawson · 1 year ago
    It's a problem that could do with solving - IM programs, Pandora and others would be nice to have running in the background. But this solution wouldn't really work with more than one app running in the background - you'd start to lose too much screen real estate.

    Why not just offer a "run in background" button within apps that might benefit from this functionality (by default hitting the home button closes apps - this would be the alternative). Then, use the home button double click as a way to bring up a list of apps running in the background that you could either switch to or kill (much as the implementation of task manager is bad, the concept isn't for this kind of thing) .

    Then, let users decide how many apps they're willing to have running in the background (and hence using up memory / battery). If performance suffers, you know the reason and can make changes. How many apps would you really want running in the background at one time anyway?
  • Costa Walcott · 1 year ago
    Yeah, I was thinking of a way to have only one application run in the background at once, since as you said users probably don't actually need too many simultaneously. But for multiple background processes I like your method a lot.
  • udkl · 1 year ago
    Honest feedback :

    Though this blog is good, what puts me off is the font. Please change your font to sometihng more 'readable' . Increase lineheight or something .....