Posts Tagged ‘multi tasking’

Seven Multitasking Service APIs iPhone Developers Would Love

April 13th, 2010

iPhone is about to get multitasking which is the best among all the other multitasking on Mobile devices, said Apple. Until it’s rolled out for public use and iPhone developers start developing for OS 4, we can’t say if they have really nailed it that hard to be called ‘The Best!’.

If you are an iPhone developer planning to make best use of the multitasking feature offered by iPhone OS 4 , here is a simple explanation of the seven service APIs that you have in your arsenal.

Background Audio: iPhone’s iPod App very much runs in background. You can listen to your music via iPod App while surfing the Web on Safari.

But what if I want to use a third party App (like Yahoo music or Pandora) to listen to music while I surf the web on Safari?

Well, till now this wasn’t possible as iPhone never had a support for multitasking. But with iPhone OS 4 you will be able to listen to music via third party apps while surfing the web. Not only this, you can even have iPod controls when the screen is locked, same as we get if iPod is playing the music in background.

Background VoIP: Of course, this was something which was very much needed for the iPhone users. While you are talking to anyone through any VoIP service via their App on iPhone you can’t leave an App to check out your email because that app won’t run in background & as a result you lose the connection. So, through this service API the iPhone can now run any VoIP service App in background on iPhone OS 4. Upon making the app work in background, users can see the conversation notification bar on the top of the screen of iPhone.

Skype is probably the first one to use this service API and demonstrated their App at preview event.

Background Location: If you might have used Google Latitude on Symbian or Android devices you might have noticed that when you let your app run in background, that app keep tracking your location and keep your family and friends updated in your network. But this wasn’t the case with iPhone at all, as it never had a support for multitasking. Whenever you quit your geo-location tracking App, it’s no more running, as a result it can’t update your friends and family in your network.

Making use of these API now you can make your App run in background to keep tracking your location. If an app is running in background tracking your location, you can see a location marker in status bar so that you get to know you’ve been tracked by some application. You can even find which app has used location services in last 24 hours in the Settings menu.

Push Notifications: This is the same notification system which was integrated into iPhone OS 3.0. No changed spotted yet.

Local Notifications: This notification system is different and is completely an offline implementation. For an example consider Alarm Clock. Till now, if the user wanted to use any third party app for reminder or wake up alarm, they just couldn’t find a proper solution to this, because, third party apps can’t run in background and hence can’t notify the user at a given time. Through this service API you can easily notify user at any given time. So, users can now find some great timepieces in AppStore which can remind / notify user at any given time.

Fast App Switching: This API gives an app an ability to save the current session before responding to any other. It saves the session where you left it and when the user returns to an app, the app resumes the session where the user left it.

Tap Tap seems to be the first game using this service API.

Task completion: These services will give the ability to complete some task in background. For an example, if you’re uploading your photos to Flickr via a Flickr App, you just can’t quit an App before the whole task ends. However through this service API Flickr can upload the photos in the background.

This Flickr app was also demoed at iPhone OS 4 preview event.

Tags: background audio, background location, background voip, fast app switching, iphone developers, iphone OS 4, iPhone OS 4.0, multi tasking, multitasking, multitasking api, push notification, Service API, task completion

iPhone OS 4 Brings Multitasking to iPhone 3GS Users Only

April 12th, 2010

Apple has released iPhone OS 4 in beta preview for iPhone Developers with paid account. But here is a little problem if you’re an iPhone 3G user. iPhone OS 4 works well on iPhone 3G and supports all the new features except for ‘Multitasking. It’s been said, “iPhone 3G has incompatible hardware to support Multitasking feature”.

If you’re an iPhone 3G user you will probably have to wait for some more time to experience multitasking. There’s a new iPhone coming up this summer. It would also mean iPhone developers who are creating apps based on this multitasking feature would serve only users with iPhone 3GS.

Your iPhone 3G will be getting the rest of the cool features offered by iPhone OS 4, like Wallpaper, Folders etc. Keep checking back this place to know more about what iPhone 3G & 3GS are getting in particular.

However, iPhone 3GS has full support for all the features that have been shown off at the preview event. You can refer to our earlier post to read more about all the features of iPhone OS 4 that Apple showed off in the preview event.

Tags: iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iphone developers, iphone OS 4, iPhone OS 4.0, multi tasking, multitasking

5 Predictions About iPhone OS 4 Features

April 7th, 2010

Back in 2009 when iPhone OS 3.0 was released the most anticipated feature was multitasking. After a year, now that Apple has decided to preview iPhone OS 4 this Thursday, multitasking still remains as the feature with the highest demand. Of course there are other expectations from users and Apple also promises to throw in a bunch of other changes most of which are tweaks like User Expo, which is the Home Screen for iPhone.

Let’s try to predict some of the features for iPhone OS 4 and we can come back to check once we have the final words from Apple.

Multitasking: Of course, this is the most expected feature this time. Well, it was rumored last year that iPhone may get Multitasking with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 but when they previewed it, they showed off Push Notification and positioned it as an alternative to Multitasking. Though, this Push Notification services were first demonstrated with the release of iPhone OS 2.0 however got delayed by a year and finally released in iPhone OS 3.0. Today, when all the iPhone competitors have multitasking as their major feature it becomes all the more essential for iPhone to have multitasking. Let’s hope Apple finally gives us multitasking with OS 4.0 and just not come up with another weak alternative.

Better Notifications: iPhone OS 3.0 pushes you the notification right away, whether its an IM you received or to join a multi-player game online. But this notification system is really at its initial stage of development. These notifications come to the user’s iPhone even when the App is not running in background (as iPhone doesn’t allow yet). So, the parts of the notification system includes badges count, sound & window popup alert. If you’re working on any App on your iPhone and you received an Alert Window notification, you can respond to right there. If at all you quit that notification window you need to go to that app and run it & if you forget to do so then you miss it completely. Given the situation it would be extremely helpful for users if Apple improves this notification system, so that the users can view all the unanswered notifications on a separate screen or something similar. Well, let’s see what iPhone OS 4 has to give us on this.

Better Mail App: The current Mail App need each accounts to be configured separately. All accounts have their inbox separate from other accounts. So, the whole navigation flow to check your inbox is to tap, tap & tap to go from one inbox to other. It’s been expected that there will be a common inbox for all the mails account.

Better Syncing: Apple may introduce a whole new way for syncing Mails, Contacts, Calendar and Multimedia content. Today, iPhone does sync perfectly but there are some itches when it comes to third party syncing options. Like, Google Sync.

Some tweaks with Home Screen: If at all Apple gets multitasking to iPhone via iPhone OS 4.0, and then we should see some little tweaks with the Home Screen. There can be a better way to switch between Apps. It’s also expected that iPhone may have more number of Home Screens (if at all they plan to keep same Home Screen pattern), which currently can only hold around 180 apps on 11 screens.

Apart from this, there can be many minor tweaks for iPhone in 4.0 releases. Let’s wait for 8th April and see what iPhone OS 4.0 has to offer.

Tags: iPhone OS, iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone OS 4.0, multi tasking