Since the dawn of the iPhone, it has been revered by just about everyone who first slid their finger across its smooth glass surface – including myself. Even with its few, long-lasting short-comings (Copy and Paste, anyone?). However, just yesterday, Apple decided to announce the bucket of water they would douse on of the last remaining flame, ushereing a bloom of black smoke from the most popular mobile OS: multitasking. For the longest time, Apple has defended the decision to prevent this level of context switching from the handheld primarily to prevent poorly designed software applications from hogging all the resources on the device (amongst other things). As someone who has ever owned an old Windows CE device, I for one can understand and appreciate this decision. Still, everywhere you turn today, people are talking about the same thing: The new iPhone OS, out this summer, will finally handle multitasking. The question I ask is should it? And I ask this with proof from the limited multitasking that is available in iPhone 3.
Before I get too deep into this and start a flame war of my own, I do know that the new OS will not allow everything to multitask. I forget the details and hate Google, but it’s something like VOIP, music streaming, push notifications and a few other random things positioned for some of the more popular applications backed by larger corporations can multitask; not any willy-nilly application. This aside, the complaints of a lack of full multi-tasking still resonates in the walls of the Internet and it is with some activities I’ve taken part in today that has proven to me that I never, ever want my iPhone to multitask.
Today’s Experiment
I really didn’t start this morning intending to have a multitasking experiment of the iPhone’s ability to multitask. But as it turned out, I did. To start, I have an iPhone 3GS for those of you keeping score. Next are the applications. This morning’s inadvertent experiment started as I set out for my morning run. This is a daily ritual for me and normally its too damn cold an rainy where I live to run outside which keeps me on a treadmill. I usually come equipped with the same gear: iTunes and Nike+ which comes native with my 3GS. These together have always been a good pairing, giving me good music while keeping track of my mileage. The interesting part about these two applications is that both are allowed to run in the background. As is the case while on the phone (did you know this thing has a phone?!), I can minimize my Nike+ app while it continues to keep track of my running so I can do something else (the definition of multitask, IIRC). Furthermore, when running iTunes for the music (which most people already realize can run in the background), this frees me up to run a third application (amongst the push notifications, email, etc I already have running on this little speed demon). As it turned out, today was a nice day in the Pacific North West. Albeit cold, the blue sky and bright sun was enough to get me outside. What is more is when I run outside, I prefer to use the GPS in my phone to track my run rather than the pedometer in my shoe. For this, I have found RunKeeper to have the best (free) application out there for this type of activity.
Up until today, I have kept these three applications (at least Nike+ and RunKeeper) exclusive of one another, but for some reason my subconscious decided to turn all three on. My experience was maddening. Songs skipped and stopped altogether, the results of my runs were miles apart from one another, the Nike+ app kept stopping my run assuming “my activity had stopped”, dogs and cats started living together and a little leprechaun kept chasing me, hitting me with his little cane. So rather than the peaceful ignorance of a relationship my iPhone and I share as I gallop gracefully through the streets of Poulsbo, today was much more analogous to running the side of Mt. Everest with three screaming babies poking sharp, rusty nails in my eyes for the duration of a 5K. Seriously, it was the worst experience I had ever had with my phone. It was this that finally got me to remember the days of yore when OS vendors didn’t restrict this activity from happening more. There’s nothing more I hate than having to open a task manager to clear out memory/CPU intensive applications that are running in the background … while I’m running.
The regurgitation of my experience may not hold enough conclusive proof to you, I suggest you try it yourself. With the 3GS, each of these applications are free to use at your leisure and so try it out, see what happens. It is true, I have tried native multitasking on the iPhone and IT COMPLETELY SUCKS. It’s a good thing they don’t let it happen, else the current demeaning comments towards 1 Infinite Loop would tranlate from not being able to multitask (well, now it kinda can) to not being able to use it at all. Which would you prefer? I prefer the former. Besides, my last phone (Motorola Razr, the defacto “cool” non-smart-phone of nearly 3-4 years ago) couldn’t even consider doing anything close to any of this and this functionality has been (mostly) available since the dawn of the iPhone.
In other words, to the critics of non-multitasking iPhones of the past, and those who criticize the limited multitasking of now, shut up and try it before you complain about it. It’s a lot like arm wrestling with Steve Jobs himself. You know you can beat his skinny ass, but you know in your heart you’d let him win once the showdown actually happened. Bad analogy, but it’s OK: nobody reads this far anyways.
Tags: #thinkaboutit, iphone