It's all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

ninjacodr

There you have it. You're thinking in terms of POWER users. Apple is thinking in terms of NORMAL users. The iPhone is not for you.

hatfinch

TurboFool

thing is, the "small" developers will be left out in teh rain.

the product is great, and arguably the best phone on the market right now, but my biggest beef with apple is that when you buy something from them, its not yours.

maybe if they call it a "lease" i will feel a lot better. cause you pay $500 an are still mandated by a 2yr contract (unless u hack), and you cannot run what you want (unless u hack).

so whose device is it really? i must be a child "don't do that" "sit here" "i know what's best for you".

LOL

keyser

*click**click*

aaron8301

bigMoneyMIKE

bigMoneyMIKE

pigmaniac

I still wanna play spore on the iPhone though damnit!

ParJoe

ramond

So IM apps will still work in the background no worries there. The real issue is if Apple will remove them from the app store if they figure out your app does it. I honestly don't think they'll care.

As for background daemons like Navizon and MobileScrobbler we won't know if those work on the real phone until fw2 beta gets into our hands. One issue might be the applicaton is unable to write to the daemon folder. However this could be easily solved by an app in the store that turns off security (i.e. jailbreaks). Apple might not like that app though and it might need to be distributed through other means.

So I imagine it might be like this: you can get your app from the store and it works with partial functionality, and then if you disable security you will get full functionality as background tasks will be allowed. The app can show a readme of how to do this to make it easy

ramond

Seriously, whenever I use AIM on my computer, if I don't feel like chatting, or I got to play a game, what do I do? Shut it down. It takes 2 seconds to boot up, so I can check if there are any people worth talking to on, and if not, close it again. Whoever said they use it like SMS is seriously not getting the point of instant messaging. That is why there is SMS. If you seriously think people need to get ahold of you in more ways than just calling you, get over yourself. Here's an idea. It's a phone, how about you have your friends CALL you on it. Sheesh.

DakotaEpic

izim1

Drink you Kool Aid and shut up.

Sleeper_Service

Fuxion

giodelgado

MONSTERGOC

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

someToast

martiin

jamar0303

rimplestultskin

There's this power user's browser called Firefox. Now, you can have ALL sorts of extensions added to it that can hog memory, not release it, cause some compatibility problems ... and guess what? Users BECOME aware of the trade-offs and behave accordingly. This is an essential problem I have with some apple products: there may be an overall vision trying to be achieved, but it comes at a steep price. It's called lack of CHOICE. Bottom line? I should be able to chose whether or not to run multiple apps in the background EVEN if they slow the phone down.

lianna_g

politik

kleene

I know Apple is a great company, and some of their products are amazing. But their products are completly products of planned obsolescence and honestly, i understand they are a company, but they need to make sure they don't release products that are 60% of a product.

I don't understand why sometimes many people buy these products that lack the major features, such as 3G! Do you really think there is going to be anything else that will be new when they release it? I doubt it.

I am just really tired of all the apathetic views that many blogs are taking towards Apple. I know I am going to get stepped all over for this by our dearly apple fanboys.

extremer

MrThunderfield

Monty

someToast

I'd hate to find out I missed some important calls because the game I downloaded left some process running that ate up my memory or something.

Anyway I'm sure the iPhone hackers will see this as a way to redirect their efforts. They can provide access to some background time for people who would choose to install it.

stwf

fumducket

"Other than IM, what other application needs to be constantly running at the background?? "

War driving and GPS apps come to mind.

But more importantly it is this: it's my god-damned phone. Don't tell me what or how or when to run apps.

You APPL users need to stand up for your rights. You act like getting screwed is an honor. It's not.

olafson

As for the issue itself. What's so hard about just putting a "warning" up that says "hey dood, if you run all this crap your phone will run like shit. Wanna deal with it? Yes/No". Crippling users is just stupid.

BoinK

Here's the problem with this statement:

based on the logic above - on a computer - I would have to quit out of Photoshop in order to checkl my mail from Apple's Mail.app_ Then when I go back to Photoshop I would have to relaunch it every time_

I have never had to do this on a computer_ But from what the rest of the above article says - that's exactly what takes place on a desktop computer_

uberfu

And it doesn't mean Apple won't make exception to Yahoo or Google or Skype to make their chat client running at the background.

Other than IM, what other application needs to be constantly running at the background?? HTTP FTP server and P2P client are just not making sense to me....

pipper

landstryker53545

kezratt1

They should make the phone with enough memory in there to run apps in the bg.

The iPhone just SUCKS period!

BB8320 Live Long and Strong!

kurrupt_1

kezratt1

odnet

thechansen

WWW.MEEBO.COM FTW!!!

I am in no way affiliated with Meebo, I am just a user who wants to spread the good word.

easy2panic

gamecrazychris

Stacky Botrus

shorty63136

However, these days it's pretty inexcusable. My N95 runs several native apps and Java apps at once and is still perfectly usable - it just kills apps as memory runs out. Even my sister's Sony Ericsson feature-phone can run a few Java apps at the same time.

If they are claiming it's to stop calling and such from being affected then just reserve memory solely for that. Since this thing is supposed to be running OS X this sounds like a pretty pathetic limitation.

How much do you want to bet that big development companies with flagship products will be allowed to get around this?

sparx104

Andr3w

YOU'VE NEVER USED ONE

lucky_you

newgalactic

NightBlade

iPhone SDK: 5 Reasons to Love, 5 Reasons to Hate
[gonnected.blogspot.com]

jwsheffield

nikeplr

Your phone app has top priority. But, when your not in a call then it doesn't need to have top priority. So something else can have the CPU.

Likewise, if something is in the background--like an AIM client--it will have a lower priority than everything else.

This is not hard to do. They already have the Unix back end. Just start using CPU management--or any other CPU management, really--and you are good.

This is just pure laziness on Apple's part. That, or they want to push their own apps rather than user-created apps.

"Look! That IM client can't stay open! But ours can! Buy it now!"

And yes, they have done that before.

dragonphyre

mkrygeri

All programs should close out entirely on exit by default.

There should be a section in settings where you could chose which programs would run in the background on exit.

There should also be a disclaimer that says "If too many programs are running in the background, your Jesus phone will die of memory starvation"

KCooL81

packetsniffer

newgalactic

Brookespeed

I think they should give the (power) user the option. Because if they ticked "check the network every 30 seconds", they've opted in for the performance hit.

iomatic

I haven't dug into the Apple SDK, so have no idea if a similar architecture is possible on the iPhone. I'm just saying: don't cry about IM being impossible until people have explored all of the possibilities and loopholes in the official SDK.

Brian Enigma

frigg

Most applications don't need to be running in the background. IM is an exception. An interesting issue would be someone doing an MMO (or a real-time multiplayer game). This is one they definitely would NOT want to make an exception for, given how much weight an MMO has.

There are compromises in the SDK design, and in the distribution design. As much cool stuff as I've done in the pas with background apps, I understand why they're doing it and it's probably the right thing to do.

Gadgetdon

You mean the iPhone won't fly around your head on its own solar-powered telepathic telemetry, changing colors as it monitors synaptical activity across your forebrain??!! Huh????

Typical Apple, introducing a great SDK and then HOBBLING IT by omitting a full-featured, solar-powered, color-modulated, user-driven head-fluttering feature. Thanks, Apple! Thanks alot.

frigg

My battery life lasts all day.

kevininstereo

hofodude

Jason Chen

jaizone

Furthermore, Chen is pretty off about Windows Mobile. It's only marginally passable as an OS out of the box in most cases, you make it better by installing third party apps and loading modified and tweaked ROMs onto your device. The key here is learning what works and it's not really that tough.

pushlatency

But until it's clarified when iPhone 2.0 arrives with some of the hottest smartphone applications on the market, it's fire and pitchforks time.

Marty_MacFly

Sihanouk-s-Poodle

CarbonatedWater

KeithJ

RainyDayInterns

Kaiser-Machead

"It's important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer."

It's up to them to design around it.

Marty_MacFly

Kaiser-Machead

chrisaroz

I am sure Apple knows it will be hacked but this way they get to avoid any culpability for slow-down or stability issues introduced and they can look the other way (like with iPod applications that allow copying) to allow people to use background-run processes as best works for them.

Vagabum

Noobs-R-Us

djkibblesnbits

isawdrones

teexcue

Chowday

There will likely be a hack that will change permissions so you can run your third party app in the background...

stopcrazypp

Jason Chen

hanspecans

Really, have we gotten soft? just because it has an apple logo on it we accept it as gospel, as for our own good? bah. no thanks, I'll keep jailbreaking till it gets so out of hand that apple just has to cave.

Tensaisama

Earthslide

Mokers

JaggedToaster

Pantone

But I can still IM people from the toilet and ask them to guess where I am. Then follow up with a new buddy icon using the phone's camera.

That's all the multi-tasking I really need. If I want to do everything from the throne, I'll just buy a laptop.

CColdsmoke

MadColombian

Jason Chen

Mokers

stopcrazypp

s017jrs

Buran

Buran

SchruteBuck

extremer

Jason Chen

blachole

I imagine it's one of the bigger post-SDK releases, and Apple already works with AOL on iChat so they'll probably allow backgrounding or something like that.

Aubin

zeropoint.0

Noobs-R-Us

kezratt1

MAOW.

grr?

tyner100

[digg.com] it up.

JaggedToaster