Comments on: Why The iPhone Doesn’t Multitask

By: PhoneBoy

PhoneBoy — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:16:33 +0000

The 5800XM has other issues, too: a poor touch-screen keyboard and abysmal battery life. There’s a reason I have *four* batteries for this phone.

By: gerrymoth

gerrymoth — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:07:49 +0000

Today I’ve been using my Nokia 5800XM to listen to podcasts, tweet on Gravity, check email using Profimail and read greader using opera mini, while caling and texting now and then, ALL at the same time with no Crashes, Shutdowns or slowdown. Yes Nokia’s can multitask, with the right phone and the right apps.

By: PhoneBoy

PhoneBoy — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:16:12 +0000

It does today, it just only gives you new traps reported within a 30 mile radius (give or take). If it could do push based on your GPS location, that would be hot

By: Andy Abramson

Andy Abramson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:13:23 +0000

Trapster and push notification would be very, very cool.

By: PhoneBoy

PhoneBoy — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:13:07 +0000

You’re right, David. Nobody does the work to develop apps–mobile or otherwise–that are CPU, memory, and power efficient. Heck, even the OS vendors can’t get this right (yes, I’m looking at you, Microsoft and Nokia).

By: David Beckemeyer

David Beckemeyer — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:18:39 +0000

I’d be okay if they never open up multiasking as a free-for-all. I’m okay with those apps that want to mutitask to require an extra fee and extra testing and certification for exactly the reasons you state. Franky, people have forgotten how to program for relibability, for pacemaker type reliability. We don’ thave to. The OS recovers all our leaked memory for us when we restart the app, and computes have so much memory etc that poor practices can operate in real life without much trouble. As you note, not so on a smaller machine, where memory, CPU, and battery power consumption matter. I’ve written apps for Nokia that run in the background reliably for months on end, don’t consume all the memory, or burn up the battery, etc. But you have to REALLY work at it and have all those things at the forefront of the design and implementation – and that’s not the way most people write apps. Most people don’t even know enough about the guts of the machine to know how to write that kind of code.

By: Jeremey

Jeremey — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:32:26 +0000

Agreed, and I don’t think people have fully grasped the push notification model or the power available there.