Self-imposed Apple deadline for iPhone notifications comes and goes

Check out “backgrounder” for your jailbroken phone on Cydia. Its a stop gap solution for sure but it works. You just hold down the home button while in an ap and it goes to the background allowing you to go on to other tasks. All I’ve tried out so far was running pandora while browsing the web.

Its not without its bugs obviously. I didn’t notice any lag while using it but depending on what you were multi-tasking I’m sure there could be.

Personally – I’d rather they get it right, than to rush it out the door.

This is why I love my Nokia E71. Multi-tasking like whoa.

BIAS!!! I thought you loved apple, why are you pretending to hate them. We all know the truth.

/end sarcasm

I love when people sing praises of the iPhone and all it can do when you can’t even minimize an application. Windows Mobile might be dog ugly by default, but the raw functionality of thing just hasn’t been matched yet.

When the iPhone gets features that have been around for more than half a decade, I’ll consider it. But multi-touch and a snazzy UI that can’t do what I need it to do just isn’t worth it.

@Albert, it’s not that it CAN’T do background processes. It’s that Apple doesn’t allow third party app-store apps to do background processes. I’m pretty sure that apple has all kinds of background processes running, and I’m willing to bet that Apple’s programs stay running for some amount of time after you close them. If nothing else, the iPod application certainly runs in the background. That said, it’s a pisser there isn’t an option for background processes.

As I said on TUAW or Engadget (I forget which), Apple really needs to give the user an option to allow programs they want to run in the background the ability to run in the background. I suggested an option in the Settings app to pick what apps should be allowed to run in the background. By default, apps don’t run in the background. Opting to allow them would put user’s battery life and performance in their own hands instead of Apple imposing itself.

I like that most of my apps close when they aren’t in use. My girlfriend’s T-Mobile Dash would never close inactive programs (and some research lead to finding out that closing them in the task manager doesn’t necessarily close the background process), and her device became pretty unusable after a few hours, often requiring a long restart just to open the camera. So, I appreciate what Apple is going for, but it’s simply too restrictive for power users.

Albert is a tool; there’s simply no point in responding. Yes, the iPhone can perform background processes, but only with native apps. This is one of the reasons why the iPhone user experience beats WinMo’s, even though WinMo does not include such limits. It’s also why we never hear about “WinMo killers”. . .ultimately, it’s a forgettable platform that is only discussed or cared about by IT pros and young males with “bert” in their name who spend Friday nights plowing inflatable dolls and playing “Worlds of Warcraft.” we already know which category AlBERT falls into, don’t we?

So can someone explain to me why Apple doesn’t want to have these apps running in the background? I would think that this would be something that would just be on the iPhone, kinda like copy and paste. But im assuming there must be more to this.

@Perspective

You are a tool. He has his opinion and you have yours. I agree with him. This is just silly to block out 3rd party apps from running in the background.

Speaking of notifications of a different kind… why can’t I change my email notification on my phone yet. The default and “unchangeable” notifier can barely be heard in a quiet room, let alone an office or a city street. Its seems like a pretty simple thing to do, especially if they want to used as a legitimate business phone.

1jaxstate1 Said:

@Perspective

You are a tool. He has his opinion and you have yours. I agree with him. This is just silly to block out 3rd party apps from running in the background.

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Sure. Until you start missing calls and can’t actually open apps because your phone is locked up to to being out of memory and that being due to TOO MANY APPS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND.

Some of us iPhone fans are looooong time WM users so don’t try and sell us that WM superior platform crap. I’ve miss many emergency calls because of a locked up WM device and didn’t even know it till I tried to use it.

People have been bitching at Apple because 3rd party apps were already causing some users issues. Just like WM. So I’ll setting for waiting for Apple to get it right than let the 3rd party software developers turn my iPhone into another WM piece of junk.

@Dan

Dude… seriously! That’s complete horseshit and is one of the very few reasons I jailbreak my iPhone. Also the fact there is no status indicator for email on the lock screen is pretty ridiculous. Taskbar notifier FTW!

So, and again, I’m just trying to get a better understanding..

Apple is the best company ever because the rule their device and what may run with an iron fist and…

The iPhone is the greatest device ever until you launch more than one non-native application?

Yah…wow…sign me up.

Since developers are still under NDA until sometime next week, I can’t say anything specific, but…

In general allowing background applications is not rocket science. Obviously there are “background” apps running on the iPhone since Apple owns the system event queue. If they were to allow developers to post events, and read events from the queue it would quickly find itself in a situation where queue processing could be undermined by a rouge process(a simple “for next” loop could kill all processing if allowed to run in the background unchecked). While theres nothing to stop a foreground application from also doing the same thing, having a background app do it is harder to stop.

To really build-in true background processing, it most likely would be a complete re-write of their lower level OS. They also need to provide a “task manager” so that a user could monitor the running apps and to be able to kill any rouge apps.

The problem with push notification systems is that not only is there work that needs to be done on the device, but also the various servers would also need to understand about how to do push notification, and that’s probably where the hangups are coming from.

So as an example; Let’s say you are using AIM, and decide you need to make a call. You exit AIM, and start your call. A buddy sends an IM to AOL destined for you. The AOL server would need to know that you are no longer “present” and it would then have to send a specially formated packet of data to your device that would be sent to the system queue and dispatched to a special routine that knows how to handle that packet (most likely it will buzz, beep, or put change the look of the icon).

As you can see in that simple example, AOL would need to modify some of their server based software to post a notification.

Notification posting does nothing to solve background processing shortfall, but gives Apple time to work on a better solution for the future (3.0 maybe?)

Does anyone know how Android handles background processes? I want to say that 3rd party apps won’t have the same problems as the iphone os, but I’m not sure if this is correct.

Android has no issues with background 3rd party apps. In addition it has no issue with 3rd party apps tying into each other or the native apps or the hardware.

Perfect example. Locale can perform certain tasks based on where you are (using the tower locator) such as change profile/ringtone etc. You can in addition tie into that app with say a Twitter app (which there is already) so that when your phone reaches a certain location it posts a twitter post.

Awesome.

Sooo do we want them running or not…because on Windows Mobile there are running processes and that is what they get complains about and bashed on the most. Now third party apps can’t do it on the iPhone and everyone wants it…never satisfied.

So, like, all these silly things you can’t do on a iPhone (jailbreak or not) and people want one why? Every item mentioned here in article you can already do background on a Blackberry, and with Storm coming you’ll add touch screen, so then WHY would a LOGICAL person (Verizon hating doesn’t count) want a iPhone over a Storm come November timeframe? Bah, 2nd gen iPhone can’t even play music while reading email or web browsing? My 2 generations ago 3 year old Blackberry 7100 could do that even!

this is the biggest reason I’ve missed my blackberry.. that and MobileMe sucking balls..
at least they’re working on it…
if the Bold had come out in time, I’d have a Bold not an iPhone..

Good posts everyone. I enjoyed reading!!!