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Glad that iOS4 was not available for iPads yet

silverblack said:
The second problem is, when you close an app everytime, it defaults to the background. You don't have a choice to properly *close the app. :mad:
Click to expand...

Think of those apps as Most Recently Used. Just like the Recent Items menu in OSX. They don't do anything in the background unless they are designed to. Just press the Home button once if it bothers you.
 
I like iOS4 very much. Multitasking and folders are especially useful for me. Now I am just waiting for some of my favorite apps that will benefit from multitasking to update. A few have done so already (such as ooTunes). Wonderful.

I don't care if the implementation makes some people miserable. I have what I want. If they don't like it, they can go use Android.
 
I certainly want it. Then again. I would want it if it was just Folders and the ability to run Skype in the background. I'd love to not have to use another device to perform information consumption while talking to someone about what I'm doing.
 
silverblack said:
The jailbreak/backgrounder on the other hand is what I call true multitasking.
Click to expand...

Hasn't Backgrounder already been shown to work in iOS 4? So it will remain an option.

As for me, I haven't really noticed that the task manager is there since I upgraded to iOS 4... I think I had to force quit Guitar Hero once (the version before today's update), but aside from that, I'm not sure it's worth worrying about. If certain apps misbehave while in the background (like Mail, if someone had some legitimate reason to not want it regularly checking mail, which is what I have it do anyways), then that should get fixed.

But so far, I haven't seen major issues. Then again, Pandora was really the only app I had installed that I'd use that way, and I don't use Pandora much. Today, NPR News got an iOS upgrade, so that I'll probably use in the background. It is slightly annoying in that now, I can't just hit the home button to kill it (I have to go in the app and stop the streaming with the stop button, or I guess go to the stop button in the task manager).

I've also found the app freezing useful, e.g. I was writing an App Store review and I wanted to go back to the app and double check something (I think I would've lost my app store review in the pre iOS way). I think it is a fair issue that not all apps support being frozen properly without an update, but that should resolve itself fairly quickly (I've had an app update for iOS pretty much every day since it came out, and most of my daily apps have been updated now).
 
I must say, i love the new iOS 4 on my iPhone 3GS, but i really hate that multitasking feature. I also hate that spotlight feature they added in 3.0. It would be nice if you could disable spotlight and/or multitaking (or at least get to choose which apps that are allowed to run in background)
 
Right.. and unless the app supports multi-tasking, it isn't run in the background anyway. Yes, it's listed in the "app switcher", but it doesn't mean it's running now! I've been using iOS 4 for about 2 months now and I have come to realise leaving all my apps in the switcher is absolutely fine!
 
Choices eh? I upgraded it and not keen on the way multi tasking works. It would be nice to close the app simply rather than need to have an extended process to close it.

I have not yet seen nor heard of any good reason for this 'upgrade' that suits me, but nor did I have the desire to Jailbreak before.

I guess the option to have fire - and also a thermostat to control the heat would be good. Nice to also have refrigeration - and also a thermostat to control the heat would be also good.
 
For those saying that "unless a program is updated specifically for multitasking, it's not running in memory", how does one explain the fact that the amount of free RAM available to the OS is influenced by the number of programs shown in the background apps menu? I can verify this all day long on both my 3GS and iPhone 4. When the RAM drops below 20Mb free on my 3GS, Safari will typically crash back down to the Home screen, as well as any RAM intensive games upon the first attempt at running them. It's like the OS hasn't cleaned up memory until it gets the call for memory for these RAM intensive programs (the first time I try to open them), THEN cleans up the RAM so that when I try to open them a second time, it typically does so ok. But, if I open the multitasking view and manually "close" all those programs (even ones that have no updated multitasking capability, like "clock", "facebook", "engadget", etc), the amount of free RAM increases AS I DO THIS (you can observe it with an app like "FreeMemory"), and I have no trouble starting RAM intensive apps like games or Safari.

I've even witnessed this to some extent on the iPhone 4. It's not dropping low enough (in free RAM) to cause apps to crash down to the Home screen, but it will drop all the way down to less than 60Mb of free RAM, at which point I can go into the multitasking view and manually close all programs (again, even ones that aren't using any multitasking APIs), and bring that free RAM right back up to 240+Mb. What explains the correlation between how many programs are listed in the "multitasking/recently used" view with how much free RAM the device has? And if the OS is handling the freeing of this RAM "effectively", the why hasn't it freed the RAM (in my 3GS example above) BEFORE the RAM intensive apps need it, which causes them to crash until the RAM is opened back up?
 
You guys are being silly. What reason do you have to want to quit your apps when the OS will handle it for you? Just background everything and let the OS handle the actual memory management. The application will quit when it needs to and take no CPU power. There's no reason to quit it.

It's like asking why Apple doesn't ship an antivirus product with Macs.


Also, OP, I keep reading your *'s as "pointers". xD
 
I much prefer iOS4 on my 3GS. I see no need to micromanage which apps persist in RAM and which do not. The OS will move them to flash memory when necessary if they're not doing anything in the background.

I've been hitting iOS4 hard on my 3GS, comparing it to Android 2.1 on my Droid, and I've not seen any slow-downs or anything else I can attribute to low RAM. It's completely transparent as far as I can tell.

Free RAM = wasted RAM. The OS will close what isn't being used when necessary.

Android also does this, closing background app when they're not doing anything if memory is needed, starting them up again if necessary. The people using task managers on Android are also trying to micromanage the device like one does with a desktop computer. Just don't. Let it do it's own thing. I get 36+ hours out of my Moto Droid, even with apps syncing to the cloud in the background, without ever touching a task manager.
 
chris975d said:
For those saying that "unless a program is updated specifically for multitasking, it's not running in memory", how does one explain the fact that the amount of free RAM available to the OS is influenced by the number of programs shown in the background apps menu? I can verify this all day long on both my 3GS and iPhone 4. When the RAM drops below 20Mb free on my 3GS, Safari will typically crash back down to the Home screen, as well as any RAM intensive games upon the first attempt at running them. It's like the OS hasn't cleaned up memory until it gets the call for memory for these RAM intensive programs (the first time I try to open them), THEN cleans up the RAM so that when I try to open them a second time, it typically does so ok. But, if I open the multitasking view and manually "close" all those programs (even ones that have no updated multitasking capability, like "clock", "facebook", "engadget", etc), the amount of free RAM increases AS I DO THIS (you can observe it with an app like "FreeMemory"), and I have no trouble starting RAM intensive apps like games or Safari.

I've even witnessed this to some extent on the iPhone 4. It's not dropping low enough (in free RAM) to cause apps to crash down to the Home screen, but it will drop all the way down to less than 60Mb of free RAM, at which point I can go into the multitasking view and manually close all programs (again, even ones that aren't using any multitasking APIs), and bring that free RAM right back up to 240+Mb. What explains the correlation between how many programs are listed in the "multitasking/recently used" view with how much free RAM the device has? And if the OS is handling the freeing of this RAM "effectively", the why hasn't it freed the RAM (in my 3GS example above) BEFORE the RAM intensive apps need it, which causes them to crash until the RAM is opened back up?
Click to expand...

As I understand it any App that has been compiled for iOS 4 get Fast App Switching support automatically. I'm not sure about the Engadget App but the Clock and Facebook Apps both have been compiled for iOS 4. Fast App Switching works by pausing an App and then keeping he contents of it in memory when you switch away from it. This explains why you're seeing your free memory go done even though you're not using Apps that explicitly support the multitasking APIs.

What should be happening when free memory gets low is that some of the paused Apps are kicked out and their memory reused. If you're seeing Apps crashing or slowdown then something in this scheme isn't working as it should. It's difficult to know what this could be but my guess is that some Apps aren't giving the OS enough time to reclaim memory.
 
blackNBUK said:
As I understand it any App that has been compiled for iOS 4 get Fast App Switching support automatically. I'm not sure about the Engadget App but the Clock and Facebook Apps both have been compiled for iOS 4. Fast App Switching works by pausing an App and then keeping he contents of it in memory when you switch away from it. This explains why you're seeing your free memory go done even though you're not using Apps that explicitly support the multitasking APIs.

What should be happening when free memory gets low is that some of the paused Apps are kicked out and their memory reused. If you're seeing Apps crashing or slowdown then something in this scheme isn't working as it should. It's difficult to know what this could be but my guess is that some Apps aren't giving the OS enough time to reclaim memory.
Click to expand...


I was just giving off the top of my head examples of apps that I'm commonly "closing" from the multitasking screen (especially on my 3GS). In fact, I've found that ALL apps, regardless of whether they are native iOS4.0 apps, multitasking enabled apps, or older, non-multitasking apps, when "closed" from the multitasking/recently used screen will free up additional memory. This leads me to believe that some remnants of most, if not all, apps are somehow remaining in memory. If my 3GS gets at or below 20Mb of "free RAM", and I try to open a game such as Asphalt 5 or COD Zombies (just examples of larger, more complex games), it will almost always crash back out to the home screen. But it will usually load the second try fine, as if the first attempt and call for RAM "forces" the OS to clean up the memory. And most of the Safari will do the same thing. So it's obvious to me that the memory management side of the OS isn't quite up to snuff on managing the RAM, especially in the lower RAM devices. Like I said, I haven't seen any crashing instances in my iPhone 4, but I have seen the free RAM drop down to pretty low levels of 60Mb or below (what I'd consider low for a 512Mb device...even with no active management on my part, I've never seen my Nexus One drop below 160Mb free at any time).
 
chris975d said:
For those saying that "unless a program is updated specifically for multitasking, it's not running in memory", how does one explain the fact that the amount of free RAM available to the OS is influenced by the number of programs shown in the background apps menu? I can verify this all day long on both my 3GS and iPhone 4. When the RAM drops below 20Mb free on my 3GS, Safari will typically crash back down to the Home screen, as well as any RAM intensive games upon the first attempt at running them. It's like the OS hasn't cleaned up memory until it gets the call for memory for these RAM intensive programs (the first time I try to open them), THEN cleans up the RAM so that when I try to open them a second time, it typically does so ok. But, if I open the multitasking view and manually "close" all those programs (even ones that have no updated multitasking capability, like "clock", "facebook", "engadget", etc), the amount of free RAM increases AS I DO THIS (you can observe it with an app like "FreeMemory"), and I have no trouble starting RAM intensive apps like games or Safari.

I've even witnessed this to some extent on the iPhone 4. It's not dropping low enough (in free RAM) to cause apps to crash down to the Home screen, but it will drop all the way down to less than 60Mb of free RAM, at which point I can go into the multitasking view and manually close all programs (again, even ones that aren't using any multitasking APIs), and bring that free RAM right back up to 240+Mb. What explains the correlation between how many programs are listed in the "multitasking/recently used" view with how much free RAM the device has? And if the OS is handling the freeing of this RAM "effectively", the why hasn't it freed the RAM (in my 3GS example above) BEFORE the RAM intensive apps need it, which causes them to crash until the RAM is opened back up?
Click to expand...


And right there is your problem. I'm going to guess that you have a long Windows background. Because Windows is the only operating system that trains users to believe "Free" memory is a good and desirable commodity.

It is not!

Remember this and repeat it until it becomes religion.

Free memory is wasted memory.

Let me describe to you how a properly working memory management system works: (BTW this is how it works in OSX, iOS, Linux, Solaris, z/OS, Android, ChromeOS and every other operating system created with a decent memory manager.)

Assume device has 256MB.
1) Application is run, consumes 56MB, 200MB "Free"
2) Good OS realizes it has 256MB that is has to keep powered doing absolutely nothing useful, so it prefetches some data that you might need next. It fills up 200MB. Free memory -- 0 or close to it.
3) You launch a different App that needs 100MB. OS didn't guess correctly what you'd need next. So it loads app. (Note there is no performance penalty because there is no need "unload" cached items.) Now we have 56MB App1, 100MB App2, 100MB cache. Free = 0.
4) You close App1. OS could free memory here, but that would be STUPID. You might load the app again in a minute. There is no benefit to "Freeing" the memory until it's needed by something else. ** THIS IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION.
5) You launch App3 that needs 50MB. Operating system has choice. It could "Free" the memory previously used by App1 or it could "Free" memory still being used by cache (there is 100MB at this stage). OS decides to use memory from cache. Now we have 56MB App1, 100MB App2, 50MB App3, 50MB cache.
6) You launch App1 again. Because the OS strived to not have "Free" memory it "launches" instantly since it was still in memory. ** THIS IS WHY FREEING THE MEMORY IN STEP 4 IS STUPID
7) You close App1 a second time. Once again it remain in memory. It is not freed.
7) You launch App4. It needs 100 MB. OS realizes 50MB used by cache and 50MB for closed App1 is available. So it only now spends the resources to "Free" App1 memory and combines with freed memory from cache to get 100MB. App4 runs.

Note during all this time the "Free" memory was 0. This is very simplified, but it is the gist of how VMM works. (Most 3rd or 4th year undergraduate CS students have to write an Operating System Virtual Memory manager as a project to do this exact process -- at least at top CS departments. This is really, really basic stuff that Windows gets WRONG.) In addition to this simple stuff you have all sorts of device drivers responding to various interrupts which are constantly requesting and releasing memory as well.

Windows has trained a lot of people in exactly how not to do computer software. (This is an artifact of it's DOS roots -- STILL!) As a practicing computer engineer I find this very frustrating because it results in innocent users wasting their time doing things that at best cause a placebo effect and at worst lead them to desire the ability to control things that will actually make their life more complicated and less productive.
 
VTMac said:
And right there is your problem. I'm going to guess that you have a long Windows background. Because Windows is the only operating system that trains users to believe "Free" memory is a good and desirable commodity.

It is not!

Remember this and repeat it until it becomes religion.

Free memory is wasted memory.

Let me describe to you how a properly working memory management system works: (BTW this is how it works in OSX, iOS, Linux, Solaris, z/OS, Android, ChromeOS and every other operating system created with a decent memory manager.)

Assume device has 256MB.
1) Application is run, consumes 56MB, 200MB "Free"
2) Good OS realizes it has 256MB that is has to keep powered doing absolutely nothing useful, so it prefetches some data that you might need next. It fills up 200MB. Free memory -- 0 or close to it.
3) You launch a different App that needs 100MB. OS didn't guess correctly what you'd need next. So it loads app. (Note there is no performance penalty because there is no need "unload" cached items.) Now we have 56MB App1, 100MB App2, 100MB cache. Free = 0.
4) You close App1. OS could free memory here, but that would be STUPID. You might load the app again in a minute. There is no benefit to "Freeing" the memory until it's needed by something else. ** THIS IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION.
5) You launch App3 that needs 50MB. Operating system has choice. It could "Free" the memory previously used by App1 or it could "Free" memory still being used by cache (there is 100MB at this stage). OS decides to use memory from cache. Now we have 56MB App1, 100MB App2, 50MB App3, 50MB cache.
6) You launch App1 again. Because the OS strived to not have "Free" memory it "launches" instantly since it was still in memory. ** THIS IS WHY FREEING THE MEMORY IN STEP 4 IS STUPID
7) You close App1 a second time. Once again it remain in memory. It is not freed.
7) You launch App4. It needs 100 MB. OS realizes 50MB used by cache and 50MB for closed App1 is available. So it only now spends the resources to "Free" App1 memory and combines with freed memory from cache to get 100MB. App4 runs.

Note during all this time the "Free" memory was 0. This is very simplified, but it is the gist of how VMM works. (Most 3rd or 4th year undergraduate CS students have to write an Operating System Virtual Memory manager as a project to do this exact process -- at least at top CS departments. This is really, really basic stuff that Windows gets WRONG.) In addition to this simple stuff you have all sorts of device drivers responding to various interrupts which are constantly requesting and releasing memory as well.

Windows has trained a lot of people in exactly how not to do computer software. (This is an artifact of it's DOS roots -- STILL!) As a practicing computer engineer I find this very frustrating because it results in innocent users wasting their time doing things that at best cause a placebo effect and at worst lead them to desire the ability to control things that will actually make their life more complicated and less productive.
Click to expand...

What you've said is all well and good, and I actually know how memory management works. But go back and re-read my entire posts, and explain why, when the "free memory" is low (on my 3GS), that the next time I try to open apps that are very RAM hungry, do they typically crash back down to Springboard? But, as soon as the "free memory" total is higher, do they open just fine? THAT is the part I'm hoping someone can explain, and why I include all the other info in my posts. I'm not saying it's all about "free memory", but I do know that I can pretty much expect a game or Safari to force close itself when the "free RAM" just so happens to be showing a low amount (again, on my 3GS, this is somewhere in the 20Mb or less range). But it's very UNLIKELY to happen when that same "free RAM" amount is higher. Could there be code in the apps to check for free RAM, and if that total is low, close the app? I'm just guessing on that last one, trying to use the info and examples you give in your post, along with what I can witness and easily reproduce.

By the way...you're wording comes across as quite condescending. You don't have to "talk down" to people on the forums. Not everyone here is stupid.
 
i'd rather have it how it is than the way backgrounder makes you hold the home button. i'd rather just go through and clos e abunch of apps every now and then rather than holding the home button. thats just annoying.
 
chris975d said:
What you've said is all well and good, and I actually know how memory management works. But go back and re-read my entire posts, and explain why, when the "free memory" is low (on my 3GS), that the next time I try to open apps that are very RAM hungry, do they typically crash back down to Springboard?
Click to expand...

No. They don't crash for me. Not that I'm looking at free RAM, but I've never had an app fail to launch. Ever.

I'm thinking your jailbroken OS is borked.
 
I can't wait for iOS4 on my iPad. Now that I'm using it on my iPhone the iPad just seems so primitive. For all those complaining about all their apps running in the background and not quitting, you just don't understand how it works. There is no downside to this. Those apps are not consuming resources unless they are meant to, like Pandora playing music or a VoIP app waiting to recive calls.
 
RaceTripper said:
I can't wait for iOS4 on my iPad. Now that I'm using it on my iPhone the iPad just seems so primitive. For all those complaining about all their apps running in the background and not quitting, you just don't understand how it works. There is no downside to this. Those apps are not consuming resources unless they are meant to, like Pandora playing music or a VoIP app waiting to recive calls.
Click to expand...

You may be right. But at this point, I don't see the point of rushing into iOS4 for multitasking when most of the apps don't support it. I couldn't have said it better than this article below. This is why Apple is taking their time to update the iPads to iOS4.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/06/multitasking-ios4-great/
 
Do you think IOS will be significantly different in some ways and if so how?
 
I guess the guys that aren't impressed with multitasking aren't Pandora fans. This update has been amazing for me, I always listen to Pandora and barely have any music on my iPod(like 200 songs). However in the past, when I was listening, I couldn't browse safari or play a game. Now I can. iOS4 is awesome.
 
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