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Jobs: Use multitasking "as designed" and be happy

by Dave Caolo Jun 30th 2010 at 12:00PM

Old school Mac users like me were trained to quit apps that aren't in use. Finished with Explorer? Quit it. All done using Photoshop? Command-Q. This habit came from a time when computers shipped with less RAM than the iPhone 4, and is very hard to break.

Of course, your iPhone isn't running all those apps at once. When you double-click the Home button, you get a list of recently-used apps; they aren't all "running" in the Mac OS X sense. As MacDailyNews explains, some are in "suspended animation," much like Han Solo encased in carbonite. He's not dead, but he's not doing a whole heck of a lot, either. You'll find an excellent explanation of what's going on at TidBITS.

Conversely, Steve Jobs offered a customer a very brief explanation via email. "People shouldn't have to understand multitasking. Just use is [sic] as designed, and you'll be happy. No need to ever quit apps." In other words, the best option is not to think about it at all. iOS 4 knows what's its doing, so just leave it to its business.


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Old school Mac users like me were trained to quit apps that aren't in use. Finished with Explorer? Quit it. All done using Photoshop?...
 

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jkinner

I love the multitasking feature, but I hate what it's done to Safari on my 3gs. I used to be able to keep 3-4 pages loaded and ready (which was better than my 3g). Now, every time I go to Safari, the pages need to be reloaded! I think there is still some room to tweak this.

July 01 2010 at 9:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alex

I am starting to think Steve Jobs hasn't actually used an iPhone 4

July 01 2010 at 2:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lubsy

I seem to remember early on hearing that multi-tasking was limited to 6ish apps...? This could mean that older apps (longest since access) that have backgrounded processes will be force quitted.

June 30 2010 at 6:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff

What a troll-ish headline.

"do this and you'll be happy" is NOTHING like "Do this and be happy"

One is friendly advice, the other is a sort of rude "you'll do it and you'll like it".

I don't appreciate the bait-and-switch headline, TUAW. It's gross.

June 30 2010 at 4:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
xxdesmus

Dear Stevo -- kiss my ass. Your "multitasking" system blows. ...and you wonder why people jailbreak. I can't wait to get back to backgrounder and kirikae.

June 30 2010 at 2:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hmlong

They really should change the mechanism. Why not let quitting an app actually quit (and close) an app, just as it did before?

But if you WANT an app to continue running, then simply double-click the home button to bring up the multitasking switch bar and go from there.

Or perhaps let a long home button click close the app?

Or (worst case) add something to the Settings app that let's me tell the system which apps I want to multitask. Or conversely, which apps I never want to multitask (like Stocks).

I routinely go in and clear out the switcher, closing dictionaries and other apps I only use once in a blue moon.

June 30 2010 at 2:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to hmlong's comment
Jough Dempsey

It works great for everything but Mail which will run CONSTANTLY in the background if I don't close it manually. Seriously, it runs my iPhone 4's battery down in about four hours (of suspend without ever turning the phone on) if I leave Mail in the quick task switcher, and the battery hardly depletes at all if I close Mail.

It's probably a bug, but yeah, for now I have to be careful about whether I leave Mail "open."

June 30 2010 at 1:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jough Dempsey's comment
Ryan

Mail has *always* stayed running in the background, this is not new with iOS4.

June 30 2010 at 2:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Josh Haagen

There may be no need for shutting the apps down but I wish I had an option where I could specify which apps to allow multitasking.

For example if I open up the Clock app and set an alarm I don't need it then listed in the "task manager" forever more. It just adds to a long list and gets annoying. I wish I could shut off its ability to show up there.

Lets add that option to iOS 4.01 shall we.

June 30 2010 at 12:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joshua Ochs

I quit apps (both on desktop and the iPhone) for a very different reason - they make task switching a pain. If I have to command tab past a dozen icons to get to the one I want (or swipe several times), then I'm better off quitting those I don't need.

June 30 2010 at 12:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Joshua Ochs's comment
Paul

Why not just go directly to the app? All my apps, with folders, are now on two pages, so at most I can get to any one with a tap (Home), swipe (other page), tap (on folder), tap (on app).

If I've been using an app (e.g Mail) a lot, it's going to stay near the top of the multitasking bar. If it's an app I've not been using much I just go to the app directly. I don't even think about it - the multitasking bar is just like a special folder to me that I go to most of the time.

By the way, try this: take a look at the apps in the multitasking bar, restart your phone, go straight back to multitasking bar ... all your apps are still there. This proves it has nothing to do with "what's running".

Or install iStat and take a look at the running processes - they only ones, apart from iStat itself, are iOS processes.

June 30 2010 at 1:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tzohar

Dude, you're wasting your time quitting apps just to make your favorite apps appear in the first four icons of the multitasking bar. If you have certain apps that are really important to you just put them in the dock, or the first home screen, and go to them directly. The multitasking bar isn't meant for that. It just saves your recently used apps so you can switch quickly between apps you use at the same time, and it saves a lot if them in case you are using a lot of them. It's not meant as a "favorites" bar. That's what the dock is for.

June 30 2010 at 1:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
the pl4gue

There IS a need to quit apps. My iPod died in just a few hours because I had some games still running in "suspended animation" and then I remembered the multitasking, so I turned everything off besides Music and my iPod survived an extra 3 hours on 20% battery.

I am definitely going back to 3.1.3 once I can get it to actually work x-x

June 30 2010 at 12:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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