
Apple to preview iPhone OS 4 this Thursday at Apple HQ - anderzole
http://www.edibleapple.com/apple-to-preview-iphone-os-4-this-thursday-at-apple-hq/
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tibbon
Do we have any actual proof or justification to think that they will add
unfettered multitasking or that most consumers are actually demanding such?
Seems to be largely speculation.

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theBobMcCormick
If they announce multitasking for 3rd party apps, it's gonna put a really
entertaining new twist on this discussion:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240171> :-)

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martythemaniak
Obvious Prediction: All the people that have been vehemently defending Apple's
lack of multitasking will very smoothly switch to extolling the virtues of
this new feature, and how its way better than Android/BB/whatever.

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mcav
People who defend single-tasking do so because multitasking can cause problems
w/r/t memory, performance, and battery life. If Apple releases a solution that
doesn't suffer from those issues, there's absolutely nothing wrong with
"extolling the virtues" of multitasking.

My money's on some sort of limited form of multitasking, where apps can launch
background processes or something like that.

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martythemaniak
I don't think you've been following the conversation very well. When people
bring up the iPhone's lack of multitasking (I've done this often in the past),
most people will not say something reasonable like "Yes, you're right. It's a
weakness of the platform that they should address". No, most of the time its a
story about how lack of multitasking is _GOOD_ and how the other platforms are
bad for offering it, how users are too stupid to use it etc.

This is one way in which I can tell apart people that like Apple products (ie,
me) and fanboys (ie, those who think Apple products are perfection)

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ubernostrum
_No, most of the time its a story about how lack of multitasking is GOOD and
how the other platforms are bad for offering it, how users are too stupid to
use it etc._

To be perfectly honest, I can only think of two use cases for (third-party
application) multitasking on a device like the iPhone:

1\. App 1 in background streams/plays music while I use App 2 to do something
else.

2\. IM client in background popping up messages as they come in.

On a device with the form factor and use cases of a typical "smart" phone I
just can't think of any other reasonable case where I'd even want, let alone
need, multitasking.

So count me among the group who'll be happy if something shows up which
actually makes multitasking on a device like the iPhone _useful_ , but who
don't particularly miss it at the moment because there just isn't that much
it'd be good for.

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elai
Passive GPS tracking apps \- Like locale for android which changes your
profile settings to put your phone on silent when your at school. Speakerphone
only while travelling fast, forward to your home phone while at home, etc.

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DannoHung
Man, that's cool, but it'd drive _me_ crazy.

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theBobMcCormick
Why would it drive you crazy? From what I understand (I've never used it), the
Locale app is customizable. You specify what setting you want changed and
under what circumstances. I actually use similar but more limited free
application on my N1 called "Timeriffic". I have it set to turn off
notifications (text messages, new emails, etc) automatically at night and turn
them on the next morning. I leave the ringer on though for phone calls,
because generally if someone calls me on my cell after 11pm it's probably
important. :-)

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glhaynes
It sure sounds nice in theory, but I'm paranoid enough about such things
working that I'd end up manually turning off my ringer anyway. At least for a
_long_ time until I felt really comfortable with it... it is super sucky to be
"that guy" at a wedding/funeral...

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thwarted
Do you really go to enough weddings or funerals in the same location that
you'd be able to use something that keyed off GPS to change the ringer
settings? I seriously hope you'd explicitly turn off the ringer in those
cases.

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glhaynes
:) Good point, but I was really just using those as hyperbole. A better
example is that it can't know when I'm in a meeting or not (conference rooms
in my building are interspersed with offices), so I've still gotta manually
silence it during meetings... that's the most common use case for silencing
for me (some aren't in this same situation, but many are), and location-based
auto-silencing is useless for that.

So now the user has _two_ things to keep in mind as far as silencing: which
times it is programmed to do so automatically (all of which the user must be a
bit suspicious of already - as you said, to be extra-sure the user would want
to manually override even at those locations during times that it's _really_
important for the ringer to be off) and which times they still have to
manually override it. So we've got extra mental burden and anxiety for the
user, partially or wholly overriding the savings of not having to worry about
silencing in some circumstances. We're only trusting the system for those
times where we'd really like it to work but it doesn't _have_ to be
guaranteed, so there's some lurking uneasiness during those times.

And the user has to program it. And I'd think it's very likely to be a
significant battery drain since it's needing to turn on the GPS quite often to
be useful. Etc etc.

Anyway, it's a super-cool sounding feature when just considered as a bullet-
point, but it just strikes me as a "techno cool" feature (kind of like speech
recognition and "Minority Report" interfaces) that I doubt I'll ever see
widely used. I'm sure there are a few specific circumstances where it's really
handy and I'm happy for those who enjoy it, but I have nearly no interest in
it compared to a trusty manual switch and I think I'm speaking for the vast
majority of users there. Could certainly be wrong.

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superjohan
As someone who doesn't live in the US, I'm excited way more by this than any
iPad news.

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brettnak
As someone who does, I'm still way more excited about this than any iPad news.

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mcav
This _is_ iPad news.

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gfodor
Likely _big_ iPad news. I'm hoping for some type of handwriting/fingerpaint
recognition, myself.

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gcheong
Maybe they dusted off the old Newton code?

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kulkarnic
Well, not everyone agrees on the definition of multi-tasking. As a consumer,
interleaving of processes seems quite adequate to me (i.e. no apps running in
the background; apps are suspended on minimize), but an app developer may not
agree.

I suspect that multitasking support, if introduced will be of the interleaved
type- Apple's stance on true background apps being battery killers seems
sensible to me.

But then, you never know: with the newer iPad style batteries, they might even
pull it off! (I still doubt it, though, since that sort of OS update won't
work on older iPhones)

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travisp
I think many non-developers would agree that if you can't leave Pandora
playing music while you go check your email, you don't have multi-tasking.

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gojomo
Even more significant to me (and some large competing industries): can you
receive a VOIP call while using another app?

Skype on the iPhone/iPad is great, except for the need to pre-arrange
simultaneous launch.

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blasdel
Skype _could_ use push notifications for incoming calls just fine.

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gojomo
Are they fast and reliable enough? (My understanding was that part of the
Urban Airship value proposition was helping to paper-over the unreliability of
Apple's push notifications.)

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gojomo
I wonder: will iPad owners have to pay for OS updates?

For the iPhone, their price has been considered-included, as an accounting
matter, in the ongoing revenue Apple shares from the mobile operators. But,
for the iPod Touch, upgrade fees have applied to get new features -- with the
stated rationale being accounting requirements.

The iPad(Wifi only) is clearly more like an iPod Touch. But even the
iPad(Wifi+3G), with no long-term contracts and buy-as-you-need-it service, may
not have any ongoing Apple revenue share.

All iPad owners may be on the hook for a fee when iPhoneOS4.0 arrives.

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ezy
You bought a minimum $500 device and you're going to complain about a nominal
upgrade fee? Why do people bitch about this? You have even less excuse if
you're using a 3G version which costs $700 and charges you a min of $15 a
month (assuming you use the 3G).

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_pius
Unfortunately you can use the same logic to argue the opposite point:

You just sold someone a minimum $500 device and you're going to charge a
nominal upgrade fee on top of it? Why do companies do that?

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rimantas

      Why do companies do that?
    

It has something to do with some weird accounting requirements/rules.

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bmalicoat
It's a shame they couldn't release the iPads with 4.0 on them because many of
the non-technical people won't realize there's an update or no how to update
it. Though I guess last time they did an update along with a major device
release (iPhone 3G) it was pretty disastrous because of all the hits on their
OS and activation servers. Maybe they should have not required iPads to
activate via iTunes.

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jonknee
The iPad requires iTunes (you can't even turn it on without iTunes). iTunes
lets you know when there's an update and what to do.

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karipatila
You mean it requires iTunes for the first sync. After that you only need it
for backing up.

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booticon
For what it's worth you also need iTunes for software updates. Maybe one day
we'll see OTA updates.

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protomyth
I would love them to make two changes for 4: OTA updates and syncing to
mobileme or a USB hard drive. If they did those two changes, it would open up
more people to be able to use and iPad.

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khelloworld
I wonder if Apple could drop the bomb and say they're bringing flash to the
platform (since so many people are whining day and night about it)

I hope not.

On a more positive note, I hope they have multi-tasking and some kind of
dashboard feature.

As a developer, I really hope they have some kind of CoreImage support.

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rimantas
Bringing flash would be only half of the solution. The usual use cases
mentioned are video and games. Well, some video providers already are updating
to include non-flash alternatives, but let's say this is valid point. Then we
have games, and I am wondering: what's the use of Flash games, which are
designed either with keyboard or mouse in mind. How many would be playable
with multitouch at all?

