#1: Multitasking
I don't really know if multitasking is truly the most-requested feature by users, or by Engadget writers who cite it as a point of alleged failure on the part of Apple's engineers. In any case, multitasking on a mobile device has certainly become a hot topic in recent months. But how important is this on mobile devices like the iPhone?
While the idea of having more than one app running at once is a nice one, I very rarely find a situation that requires it, or that I find myself bemoaning a better method than what we have. There's two key reasons: One, another app is generally only a home button press and tap away, and two, several apps maintain their current state so that when you switch back to them, you're in the same place as before.
Of course, both of these arguments have some key-shaped holes in them. Maybe you're needing to switch between apps you normally store on say, your first and sixth home screen. Outside of some icon shuffling or constant trips to Spotlight (a decent solution, but one that would become tiring), there's no quick way to do this, and it becomes a frustrating exercise.
Second, several apps do NOT maintain their current state, so it's a hit or miss affair. Every time the situation arises, we have to pause and ask ourselves, "Should I answer this text/call now?" followed by, "If I do, will this game stay right here until I get back?"
I'm happy to see that tools are being included in the SDK that should allow nearly all developers to do this moving forward, and easily, from the sounds of it.
Up until the event, any time I would read a story, blog post or tweet about potential multitasking, the lone example I would see as an app that would benefit was Pandora. I constantly looked for other examples, just to find out if people really wanted true multitasking, or if they just wanted Apple to allow Pandora & other music streaming apps special rules to run in the background. Don't get me wrong, Pandora is the prime example of why multitasking is important. I would love to use it myself, but never do simply because I'd want to do other things while listening. So this is great news for the ever-growing community of music lovers. And me.
That said, it was exciting to see just what extent Apple was going to implement multitasking, and what other apps would utilize it. I think we're going to see Pandora and Skype usage on iDevices explode. It's also going to do wonders for messaging apps: be it text, IM, email and so on, if taken advantage of properly.
When we're talking about running several things at once on a mobile device, the first worry most people will have is about battery life. And rightly so, if you look at the competition and their multitasking offerings. Sure, run all the apps you want simultaneously, but you better keep an eye on what's running, and watch that battery indicator, unless you want to find yourself suddenly without the ability to even make a phone call. See, it wasn't that Apple was being lazy by not implementing this, it's that they're concerned with the experience people have with their products, and wouldn't want the iPhone to suddenly appear to have a drastically-reduced battery life. It would be giving people what they asked, but also harming people's perception of the device. Apple's solution of allowing just the part of an app that NEEDS to run in the background (audio only for Pandora, for example) is brilliant, and should get around this issue. It'll still affect battery life of course, but not nearly as much as it could, and not to the extent it does on competing platforms either.
As a side note, I believe 'perception' is also the main reason that multitasking won't be offered on older hardware. It's a fact the current iPhone and iPod touch have superior internals, so while I imagine multitasking would function on older devices, it was probably too sluggish and, again, didn't offer the kind of user experience Apple would want to deliver. In their minds, maybe it was better to simply say an iPhone 2G couldn't do something at all, instead of allowing it and having legions of disappointed users. If so, I'd say it was a good call.
In conclusion, while I feel switching tasks is still generally pretty quick - even swiping five pages to access another app takes <2 seconds - there's some fantastic benefits to this model, and I think it goes without saying it will greatly change the way we use our iPhones and iPod touches.
And, eventually, our iPads, which I'm pleased to say I effortlessly typed this post on.
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