Enjoy background audio with MLB's At Bat

As if I weren't excited enough to buy Major League Baseball's (MLB) iPhone app At Bat (here's an example of my previous gushing), they've added a new feature that makes it easy to listen to games while using other apps.

While Apple doesn't allow 3rd party apps to run in the background on the iPhone or iPod touch,* Silicon Alley Insider notes that you can listen to audio in Mobile Safari while using other applications. It's this trick that MLB exploited with At Bat 2010. With the tap of a button, At Bat will push an audio stream to Mobile Safari.

Note that MLB didn't come up with this trick, nor is their app the first to exploit it. ESPN Radio does it, as well as Scanner911 and FlyCast. Still, it's nice that MLB's devs acknowledged that some users might want to check email or hop onto Twitter while listening to game, and made it easy to do so.

Now if only Pandora would follow suit.

*Yes, you can enjoy the benefits of background apps with a jailbroken iPhone, but that's a different post entirely.

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/did-major-league-baseball-jus…

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As if I weren't excited enough to buy Major League Baseball's (MLB) iPhone app At Bat (here's an example of my previous gushing), they've...

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nbidgood

i though last season, you could purchase video of individual games for $1 each. this doesnâ€™t appear to be an option anymore - you have to subscribe to mlb.tv to get video. bummer

April 11 2010 at 3:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nbidgood

how do you launch the background audio? i donâ€™t see any options for this in the app. thanks

April 11 2010 at 3:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joseph

Pocket Tunes also uses this work around.

March 04 2010 at 10:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Patrick

i just wished there was some sort of discount for owners of the previous year's application. i have had it each of the last two years and, while i really like it, don't know if i can afford 15 bucks for it.

March 04 2010 at 7:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

not_and_idiot

flycast doesn't keep playing in the background for me when I "home button" out of the app... is there a trick?

March 04 2010 at 6:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

totoro

If Apple allowed music apps like Pandora and last.fm to stream as service apps in the background, it would address most people's "need" for multitasking.

March 04 2010 at 5:17 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to totoro's comment

Shawn

Agreed. This and the XM SkyDock app are musts for backgrounding

March 04 2010 at 5:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

TEG

MLB At Bat 2009 did this, without the need for Mobile Safari, because they were using CoreAudio for the playback. If they are using Mobile Safari, then you won't be able to surf when listening to games, as I was last year, because when streaming anything in Safari, it removes the ability to open new windows.

March 04 2010 at 4:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to TEG's comment

Kleinias

You're right, however, one work-around is to just use another free browser when Safari is streaming audio. One that is free and seems to work pretty well is Vanilla Surf.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vanillasurf-full-screen-web/id302678135?mt=8

March 04 2010 at 11:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

BigB

Yeah i really hope pandora or last.fm learn to take advantage of this work around.

March 04 2010 at 4:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

don

This was the sole reason I was hoping for a backgrounding solution from Apple: listening to Tigers games while browsing or reading twitter.

$15, spent.

March 04 2010 at 4:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Galley

Nice! I was thinking that background audio would only be available while viewing other games or news stories within the app.

March 04 2010 at 4:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply