The Indiepinion

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?