Disable Multitasking?

No.

Multitasking is implemented horribly (imo) in iOS 4. Has anyone found a way to turn it off? It is very annoying.

so why is everyone hating this i hope thats not the case with the iphone 4 one thing i was looking forward to was multitasking 😟

luar949 wrote:
so why is everyone hating this i hope thats not the case with the iphone 4 one thing i was looking forward to was multitasking 😟

I think there is some mis-perception about what is happening with multitasking. Most apps are just frozen in suspended animation, if you will, in the background, and generally you don't have to worry about them. The OS will automatically close them if memory is needed. If any of the apps are using a background process, an icon will show what is happening (compass arrow for location services, rotating rays for internet access, sound for background audio).

I think most people are seeing all the icons on the multi-tasking bar and freaking out for no good reason.

I really like all the other improvements to the new OS. There should be a way to multitask just the apps I want. Instead, any app I open is automatically sent to the background when you hit the "Home" button. Closing the app is now a multi-step process. Maybe that's why they are calling it multitasking. 🙂

Seriously, I find it very annoying. Hopefully there is a way to turn it off.

Yeah I reckon this is a good idea, personally I never saw a need for multi-tasking, put I probably don't use my phone like that. I expect someone using the Tom Tom app, in their car, listening to the iPod app and making and receiving calls or texts will embrace the multitasking as the revolution it is. But to some of us it feels unnecessary, I'm now finding myself checking the MT stripe and closing anything I don't want open. Except I'm doing this quite often now. It would make a lot of sense if this function could be switched on or off. For me it's a function that I just don't need.

Correct, I think some people are confused about seeing the programs down in the fast app switching section. These are just a list of recently opened apps. Most apps aren't even made for multitasking yet so it wouldn't be draining battery life.

Not everyone is hating it. I'm liking it a lot so far. What I think people are not realizing is that it's still mostly not multitasking. Developers have to update their apps to use multitasing. My batter time seems to be a little less but that is probably due to using a bluetooth keyboard a lot that I couldn't even use before. iBooks was sending a whole bunch of data all the time when syncing was turned off and turning off syncing seems to have improved battery time as well.

Before iOS4 it wasn't nearly as easy to remove apps from the recently launched list, however I believe this list still existed. Safari seems snappier to me.

PacBlue wrote:
I think most people are seeing all the icons on the multi-tasking bar and freaking out for no good reason.

Agreed. I see "remove apps from the task switcher" becoming the iPhone's "rebuild your desktop."

Think about it, there's not much difference multitasking the iPhone or your desk/ laptop computers. They all put the app not being used down on the taskbar until you want to use it/ them again. All use electricity, just one is line voltage and the other is a battery with less life, hence the reason you lplug in your laptop when not mobile to save battery life.

Is there a way to disable multitasking if we want to? I have noticed that my iPhone 3GS has slowed as far as performance since downloading ios4 and the only thing I can relate it to is the multi-tasking. I cannot figure out why everything is so sluggish, I mean I have nothing on my iPhone, no music, about 10 pictures and 2 x 30 second videos. I have over 14.5gb left on a 16gb iPhone. My phone was fast prior to the update. Now it takes forever for screens to change, when I click reply on an email it take about 3-4 seconds for the new screen to appear. Is there a way to disable the multi-tasking to possibly speed up my iPhone? please let me know!! Thanks!

Something else is going on here. I can start eMail replies in less than a second. You should first try restarting your iPhone by holding down the power button and then turning it back on by holding the power button. If this does not work, then a restore from iTunes might help. Some things actually seem a little faster to me. Safari has been working better than ever for me.

You can quite background apps. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211

I think what is really needed when pressing the Home button is the option to either exit the app completely or to minimize it, thus, sending it to the background.

The other thing is that while yes, the apps are doing nothing in the background, I have an app which tells you the available memory, and while all the apps are opening - yet doing nothing - in the background, they are indeed taking up memory which inevitably will slow the iphone down. I havent seen an app close on its own yet. Although there is a lot of memory in the i4, I have seen it go down to 30mb available because too many apps were open, and the phone indeed did slow down. Picked right up when I went into my multitasking bar and shut several items.
I think it works well though, Angry Birds, one of the first games I have which takes advantage of the multitasking API, works great. You can stop the game to go do something else on the iPhone (as long as you hit pause on the game) and then return to the game right where you left it, even with a bird in mid-flight lol