iWork without multitasking is a complete fail. I'm not sure how productive you could be if you have to close the app every time you want to look up information.
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iPad = no multitasking; iPhone 4G = ?
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iWork without multitasking is a complete fail. I'm not sure how productive you could be if you have to close the app every time you want to look up information.
Haven't you heard? The iPhone does multitask!
Say you're on a call with a friend and they ask, "Where's the movie theater?"...
Haha... Just kidding of course.
I agree with thelatinist in that Apple will probably try and work around it. It'd be too far in the wrong direction if after all of this they just went back on what they said. It'd basically be like them admitting they were full of crap when they left it off in the first place.
It's that stubbornness that alienates a lot of customers.
People want multitasking, not some tacky, half-assed workaround like "push"
How is that any different from how a Mac is used?
I'm writing something in Pages. I switch to Mail, which covers up Pages. I read some e-mail and then I switch to Safari, which covers Mail. Then I switch back to Pages, which takes over the screen again.
Hmmm...that sounds EXACTLY like how an iPad without multitasking will work.
What's the difference?
The difference is you will have to hit home to exit the app, find the page that the mail/safari/etc app is on. Then you open that app, get whatever you need. Then you hit home. Find the iWork app. Try doing this repeatedly. I'm not sure if you have ever created content on a Mac before but a lot of app switching can take place. Without true multitasking to switch back and forth real easily, iWork is a complete failure.
Several.
A lot of apps don't have good state saving at the moment, but the major difference is start up times. It takes a couple seconds more to launch an app when it's not already started up.
The other major difference is that it can't process anything in the background. So how about you're listening to a song in Pandora. You get an email. You want to read that but don't want to stop listening. Or what if you want to reply to a text message and not have to save and exit the game you're playing? How about an Application like Google Latitude that you'd like to be able to update without having to open it every where you go. What about applications that sync with webpages. It'd be nice to have them sync in the background so you can move on to other tasks. When posting something in one app or uploading something to a page, instead of having to sit on that screen for however long it takes, you could back out and respond to a message or go on to your next task while it finishes posting or uploading.
There are a lot of reasons.
Try hitting Apple-Q every time you want to switch a window on your mac and see how frustrating it gets.
That's a UI problem, then. The iPad will need to create a better way of quickly selecting another app. That has nothing to do with multitasking, however.
Even WITH multitasking it will be annoying to switch apps using the home-button-and-springboard method. They'll eventually have to change the software to make this easier, but that has nothing to do with multitasking.
I'm gonna bet that iPad's iWork will. Wouldn't you think?
I couldn't say until I try it. All I know is that everyone who touched an iPad raved about how fast it felt. We'll have to wait and see but I give good odds on this being a non-issue.
I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding how ANY of that supports the "iWork on an iPad will be a major fail" argument which is what I was responding to. Pandora has nothing to do with whether or not iWork will work well.
And if the iPad ran Mac apps then this would be an excellent point. But it doesn't. It runs iPad iWork, which is different.
Yes, but the apps you're switching back and forth iWork may not.
That's because it's running iPhone apps for the most part now. I'd hope it runs those faster but every device will at some point get close to the limit on what it can handle. Meaning... Because it's fast now doesn't mean it's a good idea to close and open new apps every time. My computer is faster than the iPad and I definitely don't do that. In fact Apple doesn't make it easy on OSX even since the X button just hides windows and they know their computers have a much faster processor than the iPad.
Because people like music when they work...
You seem to be not realizing the fact that multitasking inherently requires there to be at least two apps you are trying to work with. One could be pandora, one may be a quick email or a quick text message. Also, maybe... Just maybe you wanted to do something completely different than those things and you just can't. No option as it stands but to exit one app, open the other. Wait for it to finish doing what it's doing so you don't back out too fast. Then close it and re open iWork.
That has nothing to do with it. You said you don't see the reason to have multitasking in iWork. Try seeing what that's like on your computer.
Many times when people work on spreadsheets they are getting those numbers that go in the cells from some source. Maybe email, maybe a website, maybe a text file... But you're going to have to exit and launch the apps and load the files over and over and over again every time you switch back and forth. A Palm Pre styled switcher would be excellent as you could quickly switch over, reference something or copy some text, switch back and paste it.
As for implementation... This is done on jailbroken phones by holding the home button down. You hold it, the windows show up, you slide, you tap, wash, rinse, repeat.
I don't think people who haven't done repetitive data entry tasks understand the difference an extra key press or two can make to productivity. If I have to completely close iWork, launch another app to copy a set of numbers, close that program, open iWork up again, paste numbers and then then repeat I won't use it. I really think multitasking and many other features are around the corner though so I'm not too worried. The market is heating up and I doubt Apple is going to let their devices wither like Motorola did with the RAZR.
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What you say in the comfort of your house and in the heat of battle are two different things. Apple has forced other handset and OS makers to step their game up and they did! Now Apple can either take the iPhone to the next level and have the entire market chasing it again or they can continue to rehash slightly modified versions of their phone i.e. Motorola and the RAZR in hopes consumers keep their head in the sand. I have a hard time believing that Apple is going to stick with an inferior product just for the sake of doing so. Dissing flash is one thing but not keep up with the pace of technology is another and something that will kill the iPhone off really quickly.