It occured to me while reading the Wikipedia iPad page that the iPad doesn’t need multitasking, in other words it doesn’t need to be able run multiple applications at the same time. Actually, it shouldn’t even be able to do so. Moreso, the criticism it received for the lack of that feature from tech experts even state as an argument that costumers have come to expect multitasking. But … come on, they don’t!
Many of them will come from an iPhone / iPod background, if any tech background at all, so their expectation certainly isn’t multitasking nor would i expect it to be a major concern for them. However, the techies and gadget geeks who are writing the most at this time about the device and discuss it at length, they of course have that expectation. But i don’t see them as the target audience in the same way that gamers are not the primary target audience for the Wii. Sure, they buy it but they won’t be as satisfied with it as the costumers who belong to the target audience.
What really brings down the argument about the lack of multitasking for the iPad are the developers themselves and how easy it has proven to be to develop apps for the iPhone / iPod. This is in large part because of – you guessed it – the (almost) complete absence of multitasking. Now consider if all those developers suddenly would have to share their app’s resources with theoretically any other app that which the user could now all run simultaneously. How much of a problem that is you’ll realize when you look at the current, most annoying thing about the iPhone for developers: memory leaks. If other apps leak memory and that isn’t available to the system anymore even after the app was closed, what happens is that over time fewer and fewer memory is available for every app. Soon, some apps will start behaving unresponsive or simply crash. The only solution is to somehow advice or even instruct the user to reboot his fricking device for god’s sake. But wait a second … it’s not the user’s fault at all! He will never see it that way – unless he’s one of the aforementioned techie or gadget geek. Numerous negative reviews have been posted because some people’s devices were unfortunately alarmingly low on system resources – but they didn’t know any better than to blame the app itself. And even to this day i expect a large portion of users to be unaware of this connection, or even how to “reboot” one’s device.
In a multitasking environment hell would break lose upon developers and users to the point that it would have a detrimental effect on the iPad’s and eventually Apple’s image. The ease to develop apps and the technical issues of multitasking, but most of all giving the user full control over which apps are running in parallel, would spell doom for a system like the iPad. Consider Windows machines. Consider what kind of apps are constantly running on yours. Consider what other user’s have running on their systems. Virus scanners, instant messaging, control panels for all sorts of devices and tools, news tickers, anti-cheat and friend-finder tools for games, download utilities, firewalls, another virus scanner because some people need two, or three, tools for notes, tasks, getting organized, and let’s not forget about all the unnecessary-ware regular software installs like speed launchers, document finders, auto-updaters, phone-home-ers, ad-loaders and the occasional trojan horse. And guess what? Everyone agrees that re-installing your Windows system is the easiest way to get back to a stable, responsive system. And so the cycle starts anew. Oh, don’t tell me iPad users wouldn’t start running all kinds of apps in parallel with each other just because they can. They most certainly would, even more so if it were advertised as a “shiny new feature”. Even worse would be if developers figured out how to install their app as a permanent system service. But no matter what, most users won’t understand what kinds of issues multitasking can cause. Most of them never make that connection with running multiple apps in parallel and one app constantly crashing – but only on their device of course. They might even turn the device in for a repair.
What i’m saying is, i can only give credit to Apple for making such unpopular decisions regarding the iPad. They do understand their users, their user’s behavior and they are fully aware that certain limitations are necessary to ensure greater satisfaction with the iPad. And the users aren’t stupid – that’s not what i’m saying. I’m saying they need not and should not have to understand all of this. There, i said it. We’re one step closer to a ubiquitous computing device that everyone can use. Thanks, Apple!
You can call me a fanboy now but that wouldn’t be true. I’m merely trying to understand Apple’s decisions and so far, it all makes sense to me. And that’s what i find fascinating about the iPad and Apple. But unless i’m paid to work for an iPad app i won’t get one myself. I use my iPhone rarely enough, so why should i get me an iPad?
This is stupid.. multi-tasking is definitely needed and not just by “geeks”
You make a sounds argument about memory management, however all the iOS would need to do is limit the amount of memory an app can get (which it already does), and if there is a memory leak, it will get killed when it takes too much memory.
Why the hell would you want a 10″ iPad, with no multitasking, when you can get a Netbook for half the price, which can do anything except run OSX.. (oh wait, most do run OSX.. nvm), has more memory, and a harddrive, which doesn’t involve a cost of 200$ just to increase the space by 16 Gbytes.
Also, where you comment on users with no tech background, that is wrong. Expecting multi-tasking is mandatory today. Try taking one college course without a computer accessible to you. Try even high school without a computer. Computers are now grown to be expected in almost all situations. Everyone has seen more than one program at a time.
Sorry man, your wrong, and you’re wasting tons of money buying Apple products, just to get a fancy UI.
I think comparing the iPad with a computer is wrong. That’s totally missing the point.
Matt, when you can find for me a device that will offer net browsing, email, document creating and will maintain a battery charge for ten plus hours – let me know , Oh wait, there is sucha device, it ks called an iPad.
I just have to make one comment in regards to iPad users. I have used one extensively and am researching the pros and cons for purchasing one. Multi-tasking is essential for most mobile devices and not just PCs. I want to dralw on my iPad while listening to Pandora. That tiny little detail will likely keep me from buying an iPad and keep me on my wonderfully well-rounded and oh-so portable HP tm2 sketching tablet PC.
No offense, but I feel a little hostility coming from your arguments. Maybe it’s just because I spend all day with a frustrated toddler who works hard to be heard and over expresses his wants, points of view. Perhaps I am lumping you in that category. Someone inherently frustrated and spinning wheels in mud to make a point that cannot be made.
Haha, good comparison with the toddlers.
Frustration, yes. Because there were too many people asking for it, who had no real arguments. They were also toddlers asking for something they thought they would need, but most likely don’t.
I understand that for listening to streaming music multitasking is essential. This is probably the single most important aspect of multitasking, and probably why Apple allowed iTunes music to continue playing on all devices already.
Other than the occassional slow starting App, I’ve never felt the need for multitasking though, besides exactly listening to music or resting assured that some App which I wrote an email in is going to send that away in the background.
I, at least, need to see the time while doing any other activity. In the current Apple vision, I need another device of some kind to do that.
u suck dude… ofcoz ipad need multitask. when people some app to download stuff, u cant even minimize it… u have to wait there without doing anything, for it to finish download. WTF! if it was able to multitask then you wont be needing to wait for it, u can at least do other thing with your ipad. Fuck off you noobies..
the use of the ipad as a musical instrument is exploding.
the control surface is one of the most musically expressive interfaces to come along since MIDI. Musical instrument multitasking will be a “must”.
Musicians need to be able to set up groove in one app, add background pads in another and play leads in another. just like we can on a computer we should be able to use multiple apps in a studio-like environment. Perhaps it does not need to be something built into the ipad itself, but just a management app which can tie all the instrument apps together and choose the best method for processor sharing. At its simplest, a groove generated by a groove box app is just an audio clip repeating. It should be then a simple task to transfer live control to another app that uses the control surface for live play.
This does not sound much of an “indie”pinion at all. Either Apple is paying you or you are brown nosing them for some reason. Either way not a good place to be with you being a designer/manager and all.
There are legitimate reasons to get an iPad even without multitasking feature (at least until the competition catches up to the price point and sexiness). But arguing that multitasking is not needed is asinine.
I haven’t had the need for multitasking on the device yet, and I experienced its drawbacks (my iPhone 3G became extremely slow with iOS 4.0).
iPad and iPhone are not desktop computers. I couldn’t work without being able to switch back and forth between Mail, Word, Safari, Xcode, and so on.
I don’t do that on the devices because I run one App that uses up the entire screen area, and I don’t want to have to consider other Apps in the background eating up CPU time and memory – neither as developer nor as a user.
Specifically as an indie game developer I noticed that it has become harder to develop stable and smooth games without interruptions due to the background tasking that Apple introduces. It can at any time cause your 60 fps game to start stuttering for a moment. The players are going to blame that on the game, not on the background task feature which has introduced that problem and where many developers simply do not set the appropriate flag to end their application on shutdown even though it does nothing at all background-task-wise.
Btw, I don’t get money from Apple. But I do prefer the iOS devices to remain more console like with single-purpose Apps rather than slowly drifting towards being desktop computing devices with Apps who you’d rather not want to have running in the background, yet they do. I kind of worry about the “system tray icon overload” scenario that besets many Windows users, eg where each App installs some kind of background task. The worst of them being the “application speed loader” tasks from Adobe, Microsoft and others.
Pretty interesting arguments; yours as well as the ones contradictinh yours.
Though you have a vary valid point…..do not view the iPad as a computer, it is only a matter of time before these tablets would eat into the notebook pie.
I mean I would rather carry a 3G or WiFi enabled tablet on a holiday to stay connected than the smallest laptop.
Multi-tasking is very very essential else the device is really ‘dumb’. Multi-tasking need not be as ‘encompassing’ as one expects to find in a notebook, we could atleast use a couple f apps running in the background…say 3-4 (?)
Picture this, (I had a guy brag that he nowadays carries the iPad to his client meeting and runs presentations off it…impresses the heck out of the clients according to him), I create a presentation at home…painstakingly on the iPad saving my efforts in Keynote, everytime I need to edit a certain picture I want in my presentation using some other app…the process keeps going on and on unless I have the mental clarity to have though the whole presentation through beforehand and even as to how and when I would be closing one app, opening another app, then import the edited data from one app into another app…everytime saving my data in an app opening another app….bla…bla… Oh heck! I will just take my laptop to the presentation and use the laptop to create it too…
iPad?!…hell I will just impress people who dont have it!!…What do I do with it?…play ‘Angry birds…’.
I am very sure that Apple WILL introduce milti-tasking on the iPad…soon. It would probably be iPad4 or something…in between…they will keep milking us.
I must agree with Raj, “But arguing that multitasking is not needed is asinine.”
i think Steffen is just trying to make an analytical reasoning, as a matter of fact. there’s no need to be too overractive over it. i’ve been looking for answers n i think credit shld be given to him for taking the effort to come out with some n practically posting it for our review.
thumbs up, Steffen! thx for the information.
Its not true the iPad do have multi tasking abilities, I’m not sure is it consider multi tasking but it moving from one app to another without clashing your original app. For those who own an iPad all you have to do is use 4-5 figures to slide the screen upwards to see all the open apps and forward or backward to move from one app to another.