Spoken Like a Geek » iOS4

Killing an App in iOS4

Neil Thompson — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:19:30 +0000

Oh there are so many problems with iOS4 but I won’t repeat them here but my biggest problem with it (after the horrendous battery life) is the multitasking. In particular the way that now when you close down an app it goes to the background. This is fine for the most part but for some apps they continue to process (yes I know that’s what multitasking means but not in Apples universe.) An app that is sent to the background saves its state and sleeps. So i have a radio app that when you close it down it continues to play. In certain circumstances this is great but what about when you want to close it completely? It seems that you have to go into the tray, hold down the app until they “wobble” (that’s a technical term) and then close the app. What a palaver.

Apparently the official recommended way is to:

^Hold down the power until you see the slide to power off screen. Release the power button and hold down the home button until the apps quits”

I have tried this and it takes ages but it does work.

So why don’t I dump iOS4? Well I am seriously considering it and am just trying to decide if the folders functionality and wallpapers are enough to warrant sticking with it.

Or perhaps Apple will issue a fix? Nah.

Call that Multi-tasking?

Neil Thompson — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:12:45 +0000

Maybe it’s me but I just don’t get iOS4’s “multi-tasking”. Multi-tasking is supposed to be a time saver not a confusing pain in the arse.

With the introduction of iOS4 you get (limited) support for apps running in the background. Correction! You get support for certain features running in the background, such as streaming music or uploading a file. For anything else the app is put into suspended animation. These apps are put into, well what can only be described as a system tray. Double clicking the home button now brings up a display of all your running apps.

After a while that tray runs to many apps and takes many swipes to see them all (see screenshot above) which seems to somewhat defeat the purpose of this being a quick way to move between “running” apps. It gets to such a stage that I have so many apps in the tray that it is just as quick for me to find it on the normal home screens. That can’t be right surely? It seems that it is and I am not the only one to complain. The following is Jared Newman in a post entitled Multitasking With iOS 4 is Horrible: Apple Blew It:

“What bothers me the most, however, is the sloppy implementation of iPhone multitasking. Every time you open an app, it gets added to the tray, and the only way to close it is by pressing and holding any app icon, then clicking the top-left corner of the apps you want to close. If you don’t micromanage, the tray quickly becomes overrun with clutter, making it hard to find the apps you really need.”

All this and battery life that is much worse than before (and it was pretty bad to start with). Let’s hope that Apple look into both these issues quickly. However, I am not hopeful as Apple have a poor record on this sort of thing – they have, no doubt, moved onto the iPhone5.

iOS4, We Have a Problem

Neil Thompson — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:32:05 +0000

Last Monday, like many others, I sat in front of iTunes repeatedly pressing the check for updates button willing iOS4 to be available so I could upgrade my iPhone. Unlike many others it went very smoothly for me taking hardly any time at all to backup the device and then carry out the install. In fact the slowest part was the download itself.

As you can see from the screenshot left one of the first things I did was to change the wallpaper. I then had a play with the folders and a general explore of the more obvious new features.

Next day I was out of the office for the day up in London. These days are always a challenge to the battery and it needed a boost during the day to ensure I got a full days usage out of it. Since then I have been back to my “normal” usage pattern and the most striking thing is the speed with which the battery is now being depleted. I used to comfortably get a days usage. Now I am noticing that I am getting low battery warnings before the day is out and I am not the only one.

There are a number of suggestions on the forums about what to turn off to help the situation (3G, wifi, notifications) but it seems to me that if I turn all those things off I won’t have a smartphone and I might as well go back to my trusty Nokia 6310i. The alternative is to carry a battery pack or maybe I should just keep it switched off – that’ll sort it, right?