Disable Multitasking?

Multitasking? What good is it? The only thing I can figure is playing music while doing other things. Other than that it is as useless as a boar with **.

Look at it like this. To open an app you touch it's icon, wow, it opens.

To open an app in the bar (multitasking), you have to hit the button TWICE, scroll through ALL of the apps you have opened previously (and it does put every d** one of them down there) then touch the icon and it will launch. Then to close them you must do it one by one.

Hmmm, I think I will just touch the icon.

They did it just so they can SAY they have multitasking to compete with one of the larger complaints that many other phones can do it.

Come on people, how can there be any kind of debate if it is useful or not. It is a big joke. I don't care what anybody says, after the update, my battery absolutely does go down faster. No push no nothing, never have never will. Facebook is a joke and I don't use it either.

Yup. I agree. 100%. I do like to play music while I am navigating. Other than that - useless.

Ok, but that's not exactly the way you have to do it. If you open an app, and then press the HOME button, it's still in suspended animation. You don't "need" to double-click to get it to do that, and you don't need to double-click to open another app and multi-task. The double-click only brings up what you should think of as the "Most Recently Used" app list. So if app 1 was on the 2nd screen, and app 2 was on the 5th screen, it would be easier to double-tap to switch between them (rather than press home and navigate from page to page).

Use it how ever you want, but personally, I think it's a brilliant implementation which allows easy switching, allows things to run in the background if necessary (gps, music, etc), doesn't use much resources for those it has frozen, and doesn't kill your battery !

It's great for people who really take advantage of that feature. Because it does work. For these people the extra steps is just part of the process of taking advantage of multitask. So they won't mind it. But for the rest of us, which seems to be a growing number, don't really use it. So all the extra steps just becomes a hindrance and annoyance. Especially being used the much more simplistic iOS3.x

I'm not saying remove the feature, by all means keep it. But Apple should make a feature to make it an option. So for the rest of us who don't use it, or have need of it, we can just shut it off and have our phones work like it used to. Once click of home key, app quits (completely), done.

If Apple doesn't make this change in the next update, I think it's their way of getting people to switch to the iPhone 4. iOS4 works like a charm on the new iPhone. Don't mistake the antenna hardware issue with the OS. As that seems to be the only problem plaguing the iPhone 4 right now. Other than that (and the yellow display), no one else seems to be complaining about iOS4 on the iPhone 4.

It is pretty obvious to me that the system Apple devised just plain does not function as it was intended to function.

It works exactly as Apple intended it to function (as they described it in the iOS 4 launch) - it just doesn't work in the way some users think it was intended to function.

Its ok unless you want to run a gps app. If you are running gps a lot, or anyother app that keeps running and using battery in the background - its a pain in the butt. Chews through battery very quickly and unless you spend hours reading forums and researching this you have no clue why its happening. I'm still unsure exactly which apps are actually running in the background using battery and which apps are not.

As to iPhone 4 - I don't know. The only relevant difference I think is the extra ram so that would make the nav. apps and other big apps more stable perhaps. But I doubt the battery consumption issues are any different. Are they?

But I agree - give me the option to turn it off either globally or even better app by app, and I'm happy.

The way Apple has implimented multitasking is aweful.

1/ No way to tell if an application is running or not. Backgrounder added a nice badge to an app if it was running which was GREAT, please Apple learn from this example.
2/ Default action when clicking on home button should be to close, or at least let me configure my default action. Again Backgrounder did this perfectly, single click to close, click and hold to background.

For all you idiots that keep saying you don't need to worry about apps in the backgrond, you really need to do some testing before spouting off like a bunch of Apple fanboys.
Try this.
Open TomTom or another backgrounding enabled navigation app.
Close back to the home screen. App will keep running and you will continue to see the GPS in use icon in the status bar.
After about 6 hours you will go from 100% battery to 0% battery even if you don't use the phone at all.
Even for non-navigation apps battery life is a lot worse with multiple apps running in the background. Closing the apps after use is really a pain.

Maybe if you bothered to read what has been actually said, you would know that EVERYONE agrees that nav, and music streaming apps run continuously in the background and consume battery. Only a complete ignoramus or troll would announce as a new revelation that running a nav app would do this.

As for as the 99% apps that merely remain frozen in memory using battery, this has been tested and shown to have no effect. I did it myself by leaving 22 iOS4 compliant apps open, vs none with no difference.

As for you considering "closing the apps after use is really a pain", perhaps Apple can address this in the Accessibility settings to deal with your disability (err, "challenges")

Might want to wait a few minutes before you push the send button guys. No need for name calling. We're all just trying to understand how this new system works and get the most out of it.

If I don't close the programs that are running in the background through the multitask function, the battery of my iPhone ends in less than four hours.
Thanks Apple, for the piece of **** function that you have implemented and, worse, without leaving a **** button so that I can disable this!

alexnovelli wrote:
If I don't close the programs that are running in the background through the multitask function, the battery of my iPhone ends in less than four hours.

What programs are they? There are only a few that "run in the background" - audio streaming (you can HEAR them, no way to forget) and nav programs with voice directions (you hear them too). The other 99+% of apps can't and don't DO anything in the background and don't consume the battery.

Thanks Apple, for the piece of **** function that you have implemented and, worse, without leaving a **** button so that I can disable this!

Who are you "thanking" here? Apple doesn't read these posts. This is a user-to user help forum only.

If you want to suggest a multitasking kill switch to Apple, post it on the feedback link below. Be sure to include the unedited expletives from your post here. It certainly will impress them with your piercing intellect and breadth of knowledge, as well as humiliate and intimidate them into doing what you want.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

What you and several others fail to see is that the way things work wasn't changed as much as you think it was. There's the multitasking routines apps can use if they can benefit from that, but mostly it works the same as it always did, except if you tap the home button twice, you can see the list of recently launched apps and if one of them is actually using multitasking, you can close it.

Before this, you could kick apps out of memory by holding down the home button. Apps could still remain in memory and sometimes were not removed to free up memory causing problems with more memory intensive apps. At least now there is a way to more easily clear out memory than trying to remember everything you launched, launch it again and then quit it by holding the home button down. Restarting the iPhone also works although it leaves icons in the recents dock.

It's not that I don't think the previous iOS wasn't more stable, however I still see iOS as a step forward. Once Apple has some time to perfect iOS4 then nobody is going to miss the pre multitasking versions.

I've noticed that some of the GPS app developers have begun to do their part by not using locations in the background unless it is really necessary. MotionX GPS Drive has stopped using GPS in background unless you are currently on a route.

My bike ride home included listening to internet radio from UK and recording ride home with a tracking program.

The iPhone 4 has twice the system memory as the iPhone 3gs. I can see how it would perform better, however I have not been having all that bad of performance with mine. I've had a little bit of lag that I didn't get with iPhone OS3, however it doesn't happen that often, has been minor for me, and when it doesn't happen performance seems snappier. When I do have lag issues, restarting the phone or quitting a few apps does seem to help, freeing up some memory.

"Once Apple has some time to perfect iOS4 then nobody is going to miss the pre multitasking versions"

The key word here is "ONCE". ie Give us a shout when it has been thought through AND implimented properly. ie With a simple "Multi-tasking enabled: Yes/No" option in Settings.

I'm not a huge fan of multitasking..

I downloaded an app called iheartradio, kind of like pandora but it's nice to play some local radio stations. If I close pandora it works fine in the background while I do something else, but for this app if I close it out, it just quits. I need to leave the app open on the screen for it to keep playing?? It's showing it's running in the background when double clicking the home button and I have a strong signal.

Is it the app that isn't "multitasking ready/availble"?

chiphone33 wrote:
I'm not a huge fan of multitasking..

I downloaded an app called iheartradio, kind of like pandora but it's nice to play some local radio stations. If I close pandora it works fine in the background while I do something else, but for this app if I close it out, it just quits. I need to leave the app open on the screen for it to keep playing?? It's showing it's running in the background when double clicking the home button and I have a strong signal.

Is it the app that isn't "multitasking ready/availble"?

iOS4 simply provides the ability for apps to run in the background if they have been update to use the new API's. The app must still be updated to actually run in the background.

I would check to see if there are any updates available for the apps you are having issues with.