Poll: iPhone Background Push Notifications or True Multi-tasking?
By Will Park on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 3:15 PM PST In Apple, iPhone, iPhone OS
Everyone loves a good poll, right? Right. So, let’s get this party started!
The new iPhone rumor has Apple mulling some sort of multi-task support for the iPhone. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had previously stated that the iPhone doesn’t need true multi-tasking capabilities. The iPhone maker would have us believe that their Background Push Notification technology will be good enough for most people, and should even appease some moderate iPhone users. But, without the ability to run multiple iPhone applications in the background, heavy iPhone users won’t be able to switch between multiple third-party apps without losing data. And, therein lies the problem.
As good as push notifications might be, there will always be a use-case for true “backgrounding support.” But, is there enough demand for true multi-tasking on the iPhone? Sound off in the poll below!
I think they need to allow you to run at least 1 or 2 apps of your choosing in background. This is necessary in order to, for example, run a steaming music player or podcast player in background while you go to a web page in Safari or check email.
I don’t think you need more than 2 apps, especially I you also have push notifications. Background tasks will be hard on the battery anyway.
But iPhone 3G has barely enough memory for what it does already, so you may have to get the next model with mor RAM I get this feature (OK with me.)
So I’d like to see push + limited background support (at least.)
Push is going to be good enough for most users. Background apps are really going to be important for things like GPS, musics apps (especially those that stream). It think one of the most important things they can do would be to add a browser window to the email app to quickly check out email links and get right back to email when done. That seems to be the most common issue I face.