
Apple to Allow Background Tasks on iPhone? - peter123
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/03/apple-to-allow-background-tasks-on-iphone/
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eb
Can we please stop submitting rumors?

This article has no information. We can speculate endlessly about what Apple
is going to release, but it's not very useful. Let's wait and see.

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iigs
If this article is true, it really represents a mis-step or lack of focus for
Apple. It's strange to see that in the wild like this.

On the other hand, getting the notification service right on the back end
would likely have required a _lot_ of effort and cost. It's not surprising so
much that the service was never delivered, moreso that it was announced at
all.

If background tasks are allowed to run in the future, I'd anticipate Bad
Things for battery life, one of the strategic weak spots for the iPhone.

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wmf
Hopefully they will cap processor utilization of background apps so they still
work without sucking power.

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iigs
My experience with a Blackberry was that background data (polling, tcp
keepalives) were the worst of the battery draining. Unfortunately that kind of
stuff would work better with a notification API.

At one time UNIXes were all about time sharing and quotas. I think bringing
some of that back (certainly with different controls and interfaces) would be
beneficial.

