For example will I be able to leave facebook up and get notified almost like blackberrys do or is push still the factoring to do that.
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So is multitasking like having background apps?
- Thread starter michael31986
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That will still be the responsibility of Push. Unfortunately, push alerts from facebook only works about 5% of the time for me.
I haven't dug through the new API to see how it's implemented. More reports will be out over the next coupe of weeks with details.
Strange, mine works just fine.
apple is only exposing a small set of services for background processing. What apple did is make a task switcher. Except for audio and such most applications will not be executing in the background.
They did improve push notification but I'm not sure if that's capable of running in the background like an audio app.
They did improve push notification but I'm not sure if that's capable of running in the background like an audio app.
Hmm...maybe I'll reinstall my facebook app. Not a huge deal for me because I have push email and I get an email as soon as I get a notification anyways.
Like Revelation said, still have to check APIs.
Based on what was listed at the live coverage...
Since you're comparing the iPhone 4.0 multi-tasking as like having background apps, I will say it's different.
Background applications keep the entire application in the background as if it was running in the foreground. Maybe the operating system will allocate more resources to the foreground application so the background will run slower than foreground, but it will run the same.
So take AOL Radio for example. When you're listening in the foreground, it has a ton of stuff like the album art, the title and author of the song, etc. When it switches a song, it downloads the new album art, puts some fancy animation, and updates the title and singer.
Now if you're backgrounding, it will do all that.
With Apple's multi-tasking, it will only continue streaming the audio and I believe it won't update the visual stuff. So when you go back into the app, it will download the album art and stuff. This will save a good amount of performance and battery life.
Note that Push is still there as an option (remember, Push is basically a background idle connection to the Apple servers).
But honestly, I don't really understand your description. How is Facebook's Push different than the notifications from Blackberry?
Based on what was listed at the live coverage...
Since you're comparing the iPhone 4.0 multi-tasking as like having background apps, I will say it's different.
Background applications keep the entire application in the background as if it was running in the foreground. Maybe the operating system will allocate more resources to the foreground application so the background will run slower than foreground, but it will run the same.
So take AOL Radio for example. When you're listening in the foreground, it has a ton of stuff like the album art, the title and author of the song, etc. When it switches a song, it downloads the new album art, puts some fancy animation, and updates the title and singer.
Now if you're backgrounding, it will do all that.
With Apple's multi-tasking, it will only continue streaming the audio and I believe it won't update the visual stuff. So when you go back into the app, it will download the album art and stuff. This will save a good amount of performance and battery life.
Note that Push is still there as an option (remember, Push is basically a background idle connection to the Apple servers).
But honestly, I don't really understand your description. How is Facebook's Push different than the notifications from Blackberry?
The deal is, the apps don't run, but they can tell the iPhone to run a thing for them.
So Pandora doesn't run in the background, but the iPhone can keep playing Pandora's music.
Your Tom-Tom app doesn't run in the background, but the iPhone can keep reading off the map's turn-by-turn directions as you travel.
Facebook doesn't run, but Apple's push services can tell you what's going on.
There are 8 ways (including Push) for apps to tell the iPhone "hey, you do this particular thing while I'm closed." In addition, there are now better ways to "freeze" the app so that when you open it up again everything is the same as when you left.
So you put all that together and the phone does all the same things that multitasking does...just with less battery usage. If you can think of a background task that ISN'T covered by those 8 things, I'm sure Apple would love to hear about it in their feedback form. They seem to want to cover every possibility.
You can leave an application open and local notifications can take care of it. Push notifications are not required anymore.
Local notifications are just timers. Facebook (for example) can't fire off and check if there are new messages and send you a local notification. A push notification is still needed for that.
So face book runs the same I can just switch between it easier. Can I leave it in the multi tasking bar or whatever.
Local notifications help take a load off the push servers in cases where the app was having to ping out to the server and then back to your phone to tell you that, for example, you have a To Do item deadline coming up.