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I installed 4.0 a few days ago on my 3G and only notable difference is the folders. I think to use multi-tasking I need to upgrade my phone to 3gs? Stinks if that's correct!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll be interesting to see if the older phones get this. As you say it can function as a recently used list, even if those apps are not running, the user shouldn't have to care about the distinction.
If this is what people want (a LRU stack of apps), wouldn't they'd be better off making the dock do this, instead of introducing a third app area?
Android has an almost-identical "task switcher" (press and hold the Home button to show a popup of recent apps). I don't think anyone I know uses it regularly - and I just spent 18 months working in a 30-person Android software company.
I installed 4.0 a few days ago on my 3G and only notable difference is the folders. I think to use multi-tasking I need to upgrade my phone to 3gs? Stinks if that's correct!
Stinks?! Really? Apple have done a pretty good job of backporting features where it makes sense to do so.
I know, another article about the iPhone, but I really liked this bit (with relevance beyond the iPhone OS): «I think it’s fair to say that most people involved in interaction design tend to agree that hierarchical file systems have largely failed their users. […] However, when we say ‹hierarchical file systems don’t work›, most of us end that sentence with ‹so we need to replace them with something better› in our he…
To play devil's advocate for a minute: One possibility is that the most useful method of organizing data is necessarily different for each application. There are even applications for which hierarchical organization is entirely appropriate at the UI level: An obvious example is an outliner. And it's not a coincidence that our filesystem UIs have little icons of file-cabinet drawers and file folders: The real world fe…
Interesting to note how it's done on the iPad: Photos, for example, are stored in a hierarchy (in certain views at least; there's not a strong sense that the "true" scheme they're stored in is an hierarchical one), but no folder metaphor is used. It's just stacks of images.
Likewise, the "folders" in OS 4.0 are that in name and function only. They are represented more like the stacks of photos, though the objects "in" them are shown as tiled (with a linear view when tapped, for easier picking) rather than overlapping, though, in that case. But an opaque container isn't used.
So, in both cases, the objects are collected without the container being drawn attention to.
This may limit the number of levels of hierarchy that are possible (stacks of photos within stacks of photos would break the metaphor... not that people put real-life folders within folders very often), but most users don't like deep hierarchies anyway, and the extra hierarchy of objects being stored "within" apps helps mitigate that as well as segregate things somewhat naturally by type.
Of course certain tasks will always require deep, complex hierarchies.
I installed 4.0 a few days ago on my 3G and only notable difference is the folders. I think to use multi-tasking I need to upgrade my phone to 3gs? Stinks if that's correct!
Stinks?! Really? Apple have done a pretty good job of backporting features where it makes sense to do so.
Android has an almost-identical "task switcher" (press and hold the Home button to show a popup of recent apps). I don't think anyone I know uses it regularly - and I just spent 18 months working in a 30-person Android software company.
I actually use it, especially when I'm trying to go back and forth between email, maps, and music.