Would you like multitasking on your iPhone? Apple has given their stance on this issue, in which they said that multitasking will drain the iPhone’s battery a lot quicker than without it. Apple instead gave us push notification, which works well, and we can get all of our online notifications. However it doesn’t really address the multitasking issue. I do want to note that the iPhone does support multitasking of the core iPhone apps, but that’s it. Apparently, it seems that the new iPhone OS 4.0 will offer multitasking in somewhat of a familiar way to Mac users.
CNET’s Rick Broida is reporting that the new iPhone OS 4.0 will employ a form of Apple’s Expose from the Mac. All Mac users are familiar with this feature. However, if you don’t use a Mac, you’re scratching your head right about now, and asking, “What the heck is he talking about?”. Expose is a feature in Mac OS X that allows you to see all of your open windows at the same time on your desktop. In Snow Leopard it will also show you your minimized applications. This is accomplished by creating a “Active Screen Corner”, or by pressing F3 on a Apple keyboard. Once you have all of your active windows displayed, you can click on the one you want, to bring it to the foreground. This is such and enhancement to the traditional Command+Tab.
Rick Broida quotes an AppleInsider piece that explains how multitasking with Expose will be performed on the iPhone:
“Those familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 said that the user interface will resemble Apple’s desktop Expose feature, in that a key combination–reportedly hitting the Home button twice–will trigger an Expose-like interface that brings up a series of icons representing the currently running apps, allowing users to quickly select the one they want to switch to directly. When a selection is made, the iPhone OS zooms out of the Expose task manager and transitions to that app.”
This sounds really good, and I hope this is more fact than rumor. The one thing that I also would like to see if this is fact, is that Apple gives us a way to monitor our open applications. This way if we have an app that is taking up too much memory, we will be able to end the app. As for battery life, hopefully Apple has found a better way of squeezing out more life from the battery, or even have come up with a way to have a more efficient battery.
With the iPad’s release only a day away, I think Apple will now turn their focus on the new iPhone, and iPhone OS 4.0. Traditionally March has been the month where Apple has their keynote for the new iPhone OS; in which they roadmap how the new OS will work. Plus they also have some developers come up and demo their new software. My opinion is that Apple didn’t forget this, instead they wanted to wait till the iPad was released before they looked toward the iPhone and it’s new OS. Some have said that Apple has lost their focus, and the can only do one thing at a time. Personally, I feel that if Apple was doing the iPhone announcement at the same time as the iPad release, one would over shadow the other. In this way each product receives it’s own attention.
Photo Credit: iphone roadmap
Article Via CNET
