Jailbreak tweak brings multitasking to the iPad | Hacker News Reader

Jailbreak tweak brings multitasking to the iPad

thenextweb.com

47 pointsdkyc34 comments

Someone needs to port a tiling window manager to iOS or Android. On a platform where screen space and user interactions are at a premium, it seems you'd want to minimize the amount of window resizing actions and maximize the usable screen space.

I use XMonad (http://xmonad.org/) on my desktop and love it. My Android tablet (a Nexus 10) is big enough that it needs something like this; would be great to have two or even three windows open at a time.

Not trying to force a competition between Windows and Android, but this is a place where Windows tablets shine: You can have two windows open at a time, anywhere, in almost any app. When you open a picture attached to an email, it opens in a window side-by-side with the email. I can have a game open alongside a walkthrough for that game. It's incredible.

You can kinda do it with the Xposed framework and XHaloFloatingWindow (http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.zst.xposed.halo.floatingw...).

You can snap applications at borders and have a bar between to resize them, kinda like a tiling manager. But from my experience, it's not nearly as good as a tiling window manager, or even Windows on a tablet.

Like quasar but much more polished :)

The problem with quasar was that is was so different that there was allot of stuff that became weird as ipad user interfaces are not designed for multiple windows.

I had quasar however I have not tried this.

I wonder how battery consumption is effected?

One a side note: my next pad will probably be some kind of linux thing. Just tired of the apple lock in.

One of the main reasons Apple has not implemented something like this is that they

A) try to retain backward compatibility

B) don't outfit the devices with enough RAM.

The iPad 2 and Mini only have 512 megs of RAM. With that in mind, note that just displaying a MapView can easily consume between 40 and 100 megs of RAM it gets real tight real quick. Open a few apps that use a decent amount of RAM while having tabs in Safari etc. and you're going to start getting a lot of crashes.

They may have to start deprecating a bunch of devices if they want to add this feature.

"But it works now" NO, it "kinda works" - with the right mixture off apps / conditions it will run out of memory and crash.

> The most useful feature is the ability to swipe between desktops and applications, just like on OS X. Swiping four fingers in either direction switches desktops or applications, even using the same animation as on the desktop.

Uh? That is the most useful feature? That has been available without any modification since iOS 5: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/12/ios-5-features-new-multi-touc...

Perhaps this didn't explain it very well - it takes you between desktops as well as applications with this tweak

ooh, that makes all the difference, now I see why that is the most useful feature. :)

I wonder if Apple will follow jailbreaker UI when if and when they introduce a true multitasking/windowing system on iOS. They did so with multitasking and mission control UI designs.

I doubt Apple would introduce true windowing however, they seem to keep a large development/design crowd away from Android simply because developers only have to target a couple of screen sizes/aspect ratios.

Man. I need a 7.1.1 jailbreak. I want this and the BTStack JB that let's me use a mouse. That will be amazing.

Here's a video with with a demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teFyAqj1eog

Just amazing how close to an official product this gets quality wise. I really regret updating to 7.1, too bad this guy plans on releasing it commercial instead of open-source.

> too bad this guy plans on releasing it commercial instead of open-source

I'm curious: do you have an alternative suggestion for what would have allowed him to spend as long as he did working on this challenging piece of software? People often make these "too bad he didn't do this work for free" comments on HN, but I feel like it turns more into "too bad this person wasn't already well-off enough that he was able to donate his time and effort to working on this for free". This is why I went to the trouble of building Cydia into a market in the first place: to help support and encourage long-term development.

I'm not judging his intentions here, just very curious how he managed to pull this remarkable hack off. No problem with him asking for 10$, I'd just love to take a look at the source. (I would certainly buy a version for 20$ w/ source included, and it probably wouldn't be a DRM problem either, since hackers usually aren't the type of people that believe in working DRM.)

You're curious _and_ idealistic. Expecting him to give source when he needs to commercially profit from the software is beyond silly. I'd gander that you haven't been screwed over enough in life to understand the possibility of good-will gone wrong.

Either that, or he has, but retains idealism anyway.

Based on a quick Google, I don't think this tweak has been cracked yet; however, unless the author has spent an inordinate amount of time on custom DRM* , I expect it will be eventually. At that point, there will not be much downside to releasing the source code, perhaps under a no-derivative-works license. Potential exceptions I can think of include making it harder to re-secure the tweak when updating for newer iOS versions or to add features, since someone could make an illegal fork, and making it easier for someone else to simply clone it, but I would not personally consider either of those a big deal. Of course, it will remain their choice whether to release anything; they may not see an upside, or, more likely, they will simply not see the request here and follow the norm of not doing so. However, it does not seem unreasonable to hope for/encourage them to make a different choice.

* Nobody has invented DRM effective against highly skilled people, but most people cracking iOS tweaks are not highly skilled.

I am having a bit of a difficult time responding to this comment, because you seem to have simply set up and dismissed outright the primary reason why most people who release closed-source software do not also release source code (protecting their research and engineering design, making it more difficult for unskilled developers to clone their efforts and compete with them, which would undercut their ability to support their effort) and instead concentrate on your own reason (that it will undermine their DRM scheme), a reason that I have honestly never heard because it is (as you correctly point out) somewhat preposterous :/. If you were to take a second and notice that there are large numbers of closed-source projects out there where the developers did not bother with any form of DRM at all, it should become obvious that you have chosen to attack a strawman.

You also have conveniently misrepresented my original complaint (and, I am pretty certain, goldenkey's later elaboration): there is a difference between "hoping for" or "encouraging" something and indicating displeasure and expectation :(. "it is too bad that comex didn't give me $10" is a fundamentally different statement than "I would really appreciate it if comex gave me $10"... even "it would be really awesome if comex had given me $10" is not a sufficient fix: it continues to imply a form of entitlement where it is not just subjectively but objectively bad that the speaker did not get what they wanted... that comex is actually doing something objectively bad (and worse, already in the past did something objectively bad: note that the tense also changes in those versions to did/had) by not giving me $10... this kind of attitude does, I believe, seem somewhat "unreasonable".

We'll he did make a semi-valid point about the the tweak eventually being cracked. But I do find it to be quite a straw men.

There is one main problem with releasing the source code, and that is derivatives, of little extra work.

Even if the tweak is cracked, there will still be many who pay for the official version off of BigBoss or the like. However, with derivatives that could eventually add more gestures, and reproduce the full behavior, comex's tweak would become muddled in a pool of competitors.

Most piracy arguments come down to 'well we're gonna do it anyways so give us the keys to the castle beforehand.' This basic argument can be torn apart by the very fact of being human. We live to die but still fight to live. Caving in before a battle has begun is fundamentally inhuman

Right: the "one main problem with releasing the source code, and that is derivatives, of little extra work" is the one that comex first sets up and then immediately shoots down as if it were of no consequence ("making it easier for someone else to simply clone it, but I would not personally consider either of those a big deal"). (I respond as it isn't clear whether you are intending to agree with me or not, but your comment definitely agrees with my argument ;P.)

Write an email and ask. People are generally decent and like to explain how they did something that impressed someone.

And I would be glad to pay double the amount to get access to the Apple source code

Does the iPad 2 offer enough grunt to run this? Or are you looking at the 3rd/4th gen at least to power it smoothly?

This is really impressive. Good work. I'm writing this post from my ipad with it installed and am loving it.

Which model iPad are you using? Are you seeing any performance hit?

An iPad 3. I haven't noticed any performance issues yet. I guess all the apps are running in the background anyway, it's just pushing a few more pixels to the screen.

I have come across a few glitches, but no show-stoppers so far. Looking forward to see how it develops.

How can you seriously multitask on a retina ipad with less than a gig of ram and no virtual memory ?

By jailbreaking and installing "OS Experience" like the article says? The device was designed with to use a low amount of resources.

With much greater ease than you could multitask on 8mb of RAM and a 32Mhz CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Centris_650

Except most UIs on today's ipad use retina images. Meaning 1024x768x4x4 = 12 mo of ram for a single fullscreen image. Most applications run into memory warning at some point even when running on its own. I can't imagine having 3 or 4 in parrallel without virtual memory.

So many downvotes, isuppose i'll have to explain myself :

Apps for the ipad frequently run into memory warning exception, even when running on their own. One reason is the use of multiple layers of images to build a screen ( background, multiple panes on top, etc) which take a huge amount of memory even before you've loaded any data.

Now, i suppose that the cydia hack didn't add a virtual memory manager to ios. It simply lets you see application in background. Now that means even more pressure on the memory, thus my question. Running twitter and mail isn't a problem of course, since they probably don't take half the ram. But "big" apps, like safari ? I doubt it.

I guess the memory limit is per app by apple. To preserve the device battery maybe?

How much of the current wealth of Apple is due to jailbreakers ? 20%? 30%? If not for jailbreakers, there would have never been the appstore for iOS nor OSX. The popularity of the iPhone would not have been nearly the same if not for jailbroken applications then for the appstore applications. Apple should issue apologies to each and every jailbreaker.

FWIW, Apple has (as far as I understand, and I've been involved long enough and in a sufficiently high-profile position that I would likely have at least heard if not been targeted) never tried sued any of us and has never insulted any of us; they even are always very thorough in the credits section of their security update summaries (citing the people on the various jailbreak teams that led to the bugs being disclosed), and have often ended up hiring us (which also shows a lack of hard feelings on the other side). Most jailbreak users/developers actually seem to like Apple (I don't, btw ;P).

So, while I thereby do feel like Apple has gained something from the jailbreak community, and while I also feel like Apple's decisions are harmful to everyone in the long-term, I haven't really ever felt like Apple owed us, in particular, an "apology". The only thing I can come up with was when Steve Jobs (which I separate from Apple at least somewhat) on stage effectively equated the entire idea of alternative software markets on the iPhone as "porn stores" in a dismissive attempt to mostly insult Android (Google probably deserves even more an apology than we did in that instance ;P).

It seems very unlikely that Apple didn't plan on the app store for iOS from before the first iPhone was released.

I give credit to the jailbreak community for exploring new ideas, but 20% of Apple's wealth? Not a chance.

Steve absolutely detested the idea of apps and it was only forstall who actually got an app store implemented...

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