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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

OK, but it's not that Apple doesn't know how to do it, and it's not that the OS doesn't support it. It's that the user experience Apple wants to create is that whatever your device is doing, you press it's single button and it takes you back to the home screen in a known state. It's an aesthetic/usability choice, not a technical one. If you want to, I dunno, run SETI@Home on your phone in the background, sure why not, get Android, but most people don't want a) their batteries to run down unexpectedly because they left something running without thinking about it and b) apps to be using the network while they're roaming, incurring charges. Apple's single-tasking is about making the user feel in control of what is a complex device.

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I was the owner of an iPhone. When I lost it, I bought a Nokia N900. Since then, I use my phone much more than before, and multitasking is one of the causes of this increase. Of course, my battery life is worse, as I use the phone much more.

And what I do is not running SETI@home. I download podcasts on the phone using gpodder. That's much better than any option available on the iPhone. When I'm at home, I like to read some mails while podcasts are downloading and answer a call if somebody calls me.

When my wife is driving, I like to be able to read e-mails while Sygic (the in-car gps application) tells her when to turn right or left (running on the background).

These two scenarios would be beneficial to iPhone users.

Those scenarios seem to be possible with iPhone OS 4? Right? Downloading podcasts in the background is already possible with iTunes, task completion may make that possible with third party apps also (I don’t know, would be nice if someone could confirm that one – seems only logical that if you can complete uploads in the background you also can complete downloads). Quickly switching to Mail while answering a call is possible already now (the Phone runs in the background since day one), now it’s just also possible while making VoIP calls. So where’s the problem?

Since their example of task completion was allowing flickr to continue to upload your photos after switching away from the application, I'm sure downloads will be possible as well.

Downloading podcasts on the background with the iPhone's iTunes is a pain in the ass. It is not possible to subscribe to programs on iTunes, one has to search the podcasts each time. The experience is suboptimal.

In theory the iPhone is the best smartphone there. It is much more beautiful than Maemo5, of course, but, as I said, I do much more with maemo than with the iPhone.

Of course I never used iPhone OS 4. But the article shows that the Maemo has done it much better than Apple.

Can we stop the FUD?

First, how is leaving a battery-intensive service on Android different from leaving a battery-intensive background task on iPhone? (The Flickr photo upload example)

Second, are you aware that data-roaming is off by default on Android and you have to explicitly turn it ON from the settings?

> First, how is leaving a battery-intensive service on Android different from leaving a battery-intensive background task on iPhone? (The Flickr photo upload example)

Because whatever Apple makes is laced with pixie dust and unicorn farts. Therefore their products are not limited to the quaint physics of the universe.

First) A tech-savvy Android user knows about leaving things running in the background. An iPhone user may not.

Second) How is this relevant? If you want roaming on, it doesn't imply you want apps to use it without your explicit request. Concrete example: leave Google Maps running logged into Latitude and it will merrily talk on the network by itself.

Further, Apple specifically constrains multitasking to keep the user experience smooth and fun. Allowing free multitasking is a path to madness. Only a power-user would care or want it. And even though eventually a power-user would need to rebuild from scratch to remove bad apps. (Which of my 2000 apps is sucking CPU cycles now? Can't tell.. better reinstall from scratch.)

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