Wouldn't that threaten battery life? Why do many people talk down about not having multitasking when I think the iPad is clearly perfectly designed?
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Is multitasking needed?
- Thread starter DannyNguyener
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Nothing about an iPad (including an iPad) is "needed" but multitasking is wanted and will be here in a few months.
I have a number of apps that upload/download data from the Internet. Would be very nice to be able to do something else while waiting for the data to finish transferring.
Not as much of an issue as I initially thought... Will welcome it for certain tasks though with open arms!!
I've never jail broken a device before, but multitasking was the sole reason a did so on my iPad. I don't regret it one bit and know that my experience with the iPad has greatly improved since the jailbreak. There's obvious uses, like streaming music in the background, but I also find it very useful to not have to entirely quit out of a program to check something in another program. I could be in the middle of a YouTube video and get an email, it's so easy to background the video, check/read the email, the go right back to the video without having to reload ANYTHING! I'm constantly using backgrounder and I love it. I see no ill effects on battery life either. I'm sure it does effect it, but if it's running 10.5 hours instead of 11, it's not really noticeable to me and would be a worthy tradeoff.
With a screen this large, there's no reason not to be able to have two or more apps open at the same time.
Everyone's different, but it's easy to think of examples:
Weather in a corner, tweets in another. Or a browser window next to a clipart collector app. Or a game at the bottom and an IM app at the top.
Multitasking is one reason people are looking forward to Android tablets, with widgets that you can choose and place anywhere on the screen.
Most of the time apps are waiting for something to happen and don't use extra battery. Those that do, do. So what? It's your choice what to run. People use battery powered devices all the time and have to make decisions. Just like with the iPhone, deciding if you want Bluetooth and WiFi eating battery all day.
Everyone's different, but it's easy to think of examples:
Weather in a corner, tweets in another. Or a browser window next to a clipart collector app. Or a game at the bottom and an IM app at the top.
Multitasking is one reason people are looking forward to Android tablets, with widgets that you can choose and place anywhere on the screen.
Most of the time apps are waiting for something to happen and don't use extra battery. Those that do, do. So what? It's your choice what to run. People use battery powered devices all the time and have to make decisions. Just like with the iPhone, deciding if you want Bluetooth and WiFi eating battery all day.
I think we might see something like Dashboard on the iPad, but other than that I would be shocked if they ever actually allowed more than one app on the screen at once. It would break the whole UI paradigm they are going for.
Does the fate of humanity depend on it: no
Does the fate of western civilization depend on it: no
Does the U.S. economy depend on it: no
Does anybody's life depend on it: no
Does anybody's health depend on it: no
Does any iPad owner's job depend on it: no
Will it make the iPad more pleasant to use: yes
Running a photo editor and a text editor at the same time might be nice, but the main annoyance here is that you can't - for example - stream Pandora while doing other stuff. I'd be satisfied without true multitasking if functions could be defined as "primary" (playing a game, editing a document) and "secondary" (playing or streaming music) and you could do one primary and one secondary function simultaneously.
Does the fate of western civilization depend on it: no
Does the U.S. economy depend on it: no
Does anybody's life depend on it: no
Does anybody's health depend on it: no
Does any iPad owner's job depend on it: no
Will it make the iPad more pleasant to use: yes
Running a photo editor and a text editor at the same time might be nice, but the main annoyance here is that you can't - for example - stream Pandora while doing other stuff. I'd be satisfied without true multitasking if functions could be defined as "primary" (playing a game, editing a document) and "secondary" (playing or streaming music) and you could do one primary and one secondary function simultaneously.
Battery life should not be impacted much. The services needed for the tasks already exists!! That's the trick of Iphone multitasking. The programs aren't running doing all kind of useless things, they're offloading tasks already running in the background. The music stream from iPod, the background downloading from the AppStore, the uploading process from email.
The diff is, 3rd party apps can tap into these services.
I definitely would like to be able run a Skype app in the background, or listen to NPR, etc. So yes, I would say that for me it is pretty much needed.