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Mobile Multitasking

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Re: Mobile Multitasking

#51

Post by wvenable »

brisance wrote: post #40
wvenable wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to edit a document and then save it as a new document you have to make that choice before you start editing on the iPad. A lot of people are going to destroy a lot of documents that way. It could be a simple fix to still keep the same model but right now it's not very intuitive.

Well that's because we as users have been conditioned to make a copy of a document whenever an edit is required. What should've been taught, from the very beginning, is that we really should be working on versions of the original document. Not that it's an easy problem in itself to solve... refer to various versioning systems as examples.

I agree. But versioning isn't implemented in the iPad and they may never implement it because it's too complicated for users to understand. Without it, though, any program that just saves your document (permanently) without asking is going to be annoying.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#52

Post by kscaldef »

wallflower wrote: post #50
Zak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why Apple has an NDA on its essentially public developer program. There are so many iPhone developers that all the standard rules and agreements will be made public almost instantly no matter what.

No, part of the privilege of being a registered iPhone developer is you get access to beta SDKs and information that the public does not. The idea is to give iPhone developers who are in their program a head start. The fear of getting booted from Apple's program is usually sufficient to bite your tongue before you saying something in public that should not be discussed. As an example: now that the iPad SDK is no long…

And part of the problem is what we see here, which is that potentially incorrect information cannot be authoritatively debunked, perhaps for months. This gives plenty of time for the wrong "facts" to get lodged in people's heads, so even when the truth comes out people will carry on with false beliefs.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#53

Post by sanj »

Maktab wrote: post #39
vsync wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, following down the path that Palm OS devices used since first released in 1996?

Or Newton OS devices from 1993. This isn't the first time that Apple has tried to build a computer with seamless state persistence and without a traditional exposed file system. That said, neither Palm OS or Newton OS could multitask. Android and the iPhone OS seem to have found a very elegant approach to that particular problem without compromising the user experience.

Actually, both of them could, but just in very limited ways.

The Palm had 4 threads, only one of which was available to the developer. Another was used for comms and a third for graffiti processing. I don't think the last one was allocated.

The Newton had at least two threads -- comms in the background were needed even in those dark ages.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#54

Post by pkulak »

pkulak wrote: post #18

I'm glad he made this point, but he's still not giving Android enough credit. With Android, apps can create a service that can run and do whatever it likes. It's not limited to a couple APIs. People are pretty jazzed about Skype running in the background, but they are going to be dissapointed when they realize that only means that you can keep the current call running while you leave the app. Skype still won't be abl…

My mistake. I just looked through some of the documentation, and I was wrong. Previously I just read some of Apple's high-level docs, which didn't make it clear.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#55

Post by Apere006 »

mattparcher wrote: post #28
pkulak wrote: post #18

I'm glad he made this point, but he's still not giving Android enough credit. With Android, apps can create a service that can run and do whatever it likes. It's not limited to a couple APIs. People are pretty jazzed about Skype running in the background, but they are going to be dissapointed when they realize that only means that you can keep the current call running while you leave the app. Skype still won't be abl…

cpr and swernli are correct: Skype can "listen" for incoming calls. This is demoed by Skype's head of product development, David Ponsford around 00:22:20 in the video of the iPhone OS 4 Event: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1004fk8d5gt/event/ (I personally found most of the event rather interesting, if you have about an hour to spare.)

That could have been done with a tweak to push notifications, no?

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#56

Post by Tichy »

iron_ball wrote: post #48
Tichy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit that in the beginning it is a bit unnerving not to be sure what the apps are doing under the hood. My response to suspicious activity is usually to uninstall the app, though. Some better monitoring device would be useful, but already you can see which services are running, and what has been using the battery. So culprits should be easy to identify and remove, without a task manager.

Android gives you a readout of which apps have been using the battery.

Yes that is what I meant, should have formulated it better.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#57

Post by ElAura »

iron_ball wrote: post #47
sunchild wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it encourages lock-in within each app." Most users of MS Word will be familiar with this.

Only because RTF is not well-known among nontechnical users.

And because most moderately complex Word documents will not transfer 100% when you save them as RTF. Or said differently, RTF documents won't display the same in different applications if they contain enough complexity.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#58

Post by roc »

zhyder wrote: post #32
mrshoe wrote: post #2

I'm glad that iPhone OS is providing us an excuse to take personal computing a least a few steps down the path to where it should have gone years ago. Users shouldn't have to launch and quit applications. They shouldn't have to save and open documents. State should just persist. Always. If you pull the plug on your box you should be able to plug it back in and all state should be restored within seconds. All applicat…

I'm not so sure abstracting away document open is a good idea in the long run. You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it encourages lock-in within each app. Abstracting away document save is also probably not a good idea unless there's automatic versioning (at least up to a few versions) built in. Also 1-dimensional lists (like the coverflow of docs in iPad's iWork) don't scale…

Document Open certainly didn't prevent proprietary document nightmares. Lock-in is only an issue inasmuch as users don't demand a sane export. Pages documents could be a proprietary, patent-protected nightmare internally and it wouldn't matter to me: when I want the document out, I export it back to myself in a standard format. (Sure, it'd be nice to have a mass-export, but these things will come with time.)

Automatic versioning is also just "one of those things that software should do". Ideally with some logarithmically scaled set of versions when space becomes an issue.

Folders don't scale either. People quickly wind up just using search. Search works pretty darn well everywhere beyond the trivial case. Of course, for search to work really well, what the iPhone OS needs is an interface to let device-wide search tap into third party data stores.

Also, I think "piles" a la albums in the photo app is going to become a more generalized solution to the 'folder' issue. It will fill the middle-ground where linear lists break down and tagging/foldering makes sense, but before tagging/foldering gets so complex that you just search anyway.

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#59

Post by arandomJohn »

wvenable wrote: post #51
brisance wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's because we as users have been conditioned to make a copy of a document whenever an edit is required. What should've been taught, from the very beginning, is that we really should be working on versions of the original document. Not that it's an easy problem in itself to solve... refer to various versioning systems as examples.

I agree. But versioning isn't implemented in the iPad and they may never implement it because it's too complicated for users to understand. Without it, though, any program that just saves your document (permanently) without asking is going to be annoying.

Would anyone be shocked if the iPad eventually featured some version of Time Machine and that versioning just happened automagically in the background?

Re: Mobile Multitasking

#60

Post by zhyder »

roc wrote: post #58
zhyder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure abstracting away document open is a good idea in the long run. You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it encourages lock-in within each app. Abstracting away document save is also probably not a good idea unless there's automatic versioning (at least up to a few versions) built in. Also 1-dimensional lists (like the coverflow of docs in iPad's iWork) don't scale…

Document Open certainly didn't prevent proprietary document nightmares. Lock-in is only an issue inasmuch as users don't demand a sane export. Pages documents could be a proprietary, patent-protected nightmare internally and it wouldn't matter to me: when I want the document out, I export it back to myself in a standard format. (Sure, it'd be nice to have a mass-export, but these things will come with time.) Automati…

Yes proprietary formats encourage lock-in too and open standard doc formats are better. But the 'export' that you mention requires a document open (or 'import') on the other end.

I mostly agree with you on the rest.

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