As great as the iPhone is, it has one glaring weakness: The inability to run third-party applications in the background. That badly cripples certain types of apps, such as those that do instant messaging, music streaming and location-based services. Apple’s Push Notification system coming with the iPhone 3.0 software will help slightly, but it will not be a complete solution. And Apple clearly knows that, because it’s talking about ways to do background tasks.
Earlier today, Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider cited sources in the mobile industry saying that Apple was serious about allowing background applications. John Gruber of Daring Fireball backed this up, saying he heard something similar from a decent source a few months ago. I’ve just spoken with a trusted source who confirmed the news as well.
Basically, my source says that while this is in no way a done deal yet, Apple is definitely trying to come up with a way to offer background support for third-party apps. They went on to note that while Apple may have something to say about it at WWDC, it’s very unlikely that any solution would be ready at that time, and could be a situation similar to how Apple announced Push Notification at WWDC last year but said it was coming in a few months (which it later was delayed until iPhone 3.0).
And it’s entirely possible that Apple won’t even have anything to say about it at WWDC as it’s still believe to be in the relatively early planning stages. All that is for sure is that Apple is telling some people that it is very aware of the community’s desire for background tasks and that it thinks it may have a solution to offer on the horizon.
The reason Apple is being careful about this is because if it fully opened the iPhone to background tasks, the device’s excellent user experience would be threatened on a couple fronts. First, there’s a security concern about third-parties pushing and pulling data constantly to and from the device. My source believes Apple would likely separately approve apps for background support, but wouldn’t necessarily limit the offering to a handful of special apps.
The second concern is the iPhone’s power and speed. Some users have been bitching about the device’s battery since day one — with third party applications constantly running in the background, the battery life would get much, much worse. Owners of the G1, the Android-powered phone that allows robust apps to run in the background, will know what I’m talking about. And background apps also eat up processing power. With some high-powered games that now run on the device, system resources are already getting heavily taxed, imagine running one of those with other applications also running.
Apple’s solution for this would likely be to limit the number of third-party apps that could run in the background at once, says my source. This is consistent with the other reports on the matter. And the new iPhone hardware is likely to have a better processor and more RAM, which would alleviate system strain, so it’s also possible these background apps would only be possible with the new hardware.
So why is Apple talking about this now? Well one part may be the new hardware that should be coming shortly, but another is undoubtedly the imminent launch of the Palm Pre.
Given that the Pre will be the first phone since the iPhone to use multi-touch and that Palm is made up of many former Apple employees, there’s been quite the rivalry brewing between the two companies over the past several months. There has been talk that the 3.0 software will neutralize many of the supposed advantages the Pre would have had over the iPhone, but background tasks will remain the big one. If Apple can neutralize that as well, the Pre becomes a lot less attractive.
Of course, there’s a lot of talk about how the Pre’s webOS platform was constructed specifically around the idea of running multiple applications at once, the iPhone’s OS was not. But I think even limited third-party background support would be enough to satisfy most users. If I could just say, listen to Pandora, while also surfing the web, I’d be a happy man.
There has been talk about third-party application background support before, and I’ve heard whispers in the past as well. And while my source today made it very clear that it’s entirely possible Apple will scrap its plans completely if it can’t come up with a good solution, it seems pretty clear that we’re closer than we’ve ever been to the possibility of third-party background tasks on the iPhone.
Can we get a more powerful batter too please?
I think it’s a crap excuse that “background drains battery”
What is probably more true is the threaded model of the OS is crap and they don’t have much of a work around…
The background draining battery is an extremely legitimate concern – but “OH NO THE THREADING MODEL IS CRAP” is crap. It’s the mach kernel – they’ve had a few decades to iron out their implementation.
Background processes use CPU, meaning the CPU can’t use any of it’s power-standby features. The iPhone 3G bleeds battery if you listen to music, a relatively background process, how can you doubt the validity of such a rational claim?
Apple’s always been about the User Experience, if they think something is going to improve usability, they’re going to do it. This is why there’s only one big button on the iPhone – they seek to cut out unnecessary features if they are to interfere with the user’s perspective of what’s going on, when on their platform.
You sir are an asshat.
No it’s not. User would be more than willing to deal with a shorter battery life if allowed to run apps in the background.
I wouldn’t – I think it is a strength that they weight battery life over background tasks. I used to be a PPC user, and you never knew what rogue app was taking you from 100% to 10% in 30 min.
he is correct, you are the asshat and a butt pirate. it has nothing to do with mach.
new type of multitasking, after “notifications”… developers will be fried.
It “bleeds battery” because it needs to power the speakers or headphones. I’d assume (and hope) the iPhone would have a dedicated audio decoder and let the processor sleep while it played music.
i think driving earbuds is such a small amount of power (several milliamps) as to be insignificant relative to cpu time.
Is your magic “dedicated audio decoder” powered by happy thoughts, Steve Jobs RDF energy, or pixie dust? What’s that you say, its more efficient but still requires electrons.
The correct engineering solution to this problem would have been a user-replaceable battery – a feature that almost every other 3G smartphone has.
“Of course, the Pre’s webOS platform was constructed from the ground up to allow applications to run in the background, the iPhone’s OS was not.”
The iPhone’s OS is OS X, which is based on Mach-BSD UNIX. It was created as a multi-user, multitasking operating system from day 1 (i.e. 1971). Just because Apple currently doesn’t allow it for 3rd party apps to maintain performance on a hardware-constrained initial device doesn’t mean the OS “wasn’t built to handle it.” Indeed, many core Apple services on the device do rely on exactly this sort of background processing (Mail fetching, sync, etc. rely on background processing currently — a peek at running processes with no visible apps open on a jailbroken phone will reveal exactly this). This is a nonsensical comment.
I think what they mean is that the webOS interface is designed to handle multiple apps more easily with the cards model. The iPhone has a more modal interface.
If the author meant what you wrote, then he should have written it. The fact is that the author’s description of the situation is nonsense. “Platform” is not “UI”.
The iPhone interface is not fundamentally limited; Apple is simply very good at presenting the experience that they want the user to have for the product Apple can offer at the time. Too many other companies leave loose ends all over the interface and end up with an experience that frustrates users. This is an example of why Apple receives such great scores in user surveys.
If this happens, iPhone will need some sort of user-friendly app switcher, a way to see what’s running, put certain apps into foreground, into background, or quit them. Windows Mobile has a horrible native app switcher. I would hope Apple designs something much more elegant.
I bet it would be similar to what it does now with iTunes playing in the background. Double tapping the main button may bring up a box to switch tasks. I really suspect Apple will only allow something like one third party background task, so it shouldn’t be too confusing.
Your guess sounds very reasonable and intuitive to me. But putting a one background task limit doesn’t sound good. Most of us are likely to want more. Now I’m wishing there were more built-in memory — this seems inevitable in the next model to come out.
obviously neither of you has an engineering or programming degree, your guesses are foolish
I’m assuming you’re right about how the app switch would work but I hope it’s a little more flashy. I do hope they would allow two instead of just one just because the more the better.
I somehow doubt if this is in response to the Pre. Gruber says he heard about this at Macworld which was before the Pre intro I believe. It’s always possible that they found out beforehand.
Great job MG. You’ve been the best at TechCrunch since you got here!
You got it — the key challenge is a user experience one — allowing background tasks without recreating the mac ‘activity monitor’. And of course having a smart way for these background tasks to surface notifications without having them pop up and claim focus.
Background apps really change the landscape — just imagine the location-based advertising possibilities.
This should open the doors to a newer generation of iPhone apps. I do think that it should be fully up to the user to allow what apps they want to work in the background.
what about the idea that they might have upped the battery capabilities. The 17″ Macbook Pro gets up to 8 and 9 hours of battery life, perhaps on top of everything else you’ve mentioned they’ve found a way to seriously up the battery life.
True, I HOPE that’s the case as well. Though most indications are that it will have the same form factor, so a bigger battery (key for more power) is likely out of the question. But perhaps they’ve optimized it further.
You’re assuming everything else inside the case hasn’t shrunk.
maybe steve will have monkeys fly out of his butt. try to get some facts into the TC blog
This is definitely a great thing and it proves that even Apple has to succumb to consumer. With the location based explosion the consumer will absolutely hit upon the need for background running, however the draining of power seems to be a legitiamate concern, that is no excuse to let the app developers develop the apps that could be much more useful to the consumers rather than staying with some random farting application
I imagine devs will respond by working smart solutions for their apps when they are running in the background so they can run on as little RAM as possible. I’m also heartened to see Apple slowly learning that people appreciate openness. At least give us the option of draining our batteries!
As great as background applications would be, I’m still waiting for some Flash support.
If you understood what Apple is trying to do in the market, you’d understand that Flash will never happen on the phone.
And that’s a great thing. Flash (and Silverlight) are horrible, inefficient, but most importantly closed systems which go completely against the grain of openness which made the Internet what it is.
most of the flash platform is open source… also, it is as efficient as you (the developer) make it.
That may be try but that doesn’t change the situation. There are constant issues with flash whether it’s the developer’s fault or not. Flash is already a problem on OS X. I can’t even fathom what it would be like on OS X Touch where they constantly run into battery issues. . Although I would like to see it on the iPhone, I don’t think it’s the best solution at this time.
I too hate nice graphical UIs. Apple needs to come out with one or more CLI shells (csh, bash, zsh, zcsh, abzcsh, etc.) if they want anyone to really take them seriously. If it could just do GNU commands with pipes (grep|awk|yacc|!!) , then it would be a real product! Until then, it’s Android for me — java isn’t really old skool, but it isn’t terribly advanced either… middle skool.
Java is old school and your about the only person that has bought a G1 so far. Congrats.
plenty of people have bought the G1 “boat”. considering how unfinished the product was on ship and how ugly it is, surprising.
google has no idea how to market, however.
Yea having multiple apps running is pretty great on the G1. You’ll have an occasional hiccup but it’s nice to listen to music, download apps, and edit your coding on a text editor all at once. Not bad for something that looks like a brick.
one of the first things i did with my phone was jailbreak it and load “backrounder”… works great. i listen to pandora while surfing
Why not just have a setting where you can allow/disallow background application processes, and have it defaulted off. That way Apple can let people who want that “great user experience” to keep it that way.
Right now, this is the main reason I’m looking forward to the pre more than the next iphone.
I’m going to guess this capability will only be available in the new iPhone hardware announced in June. Giving everyone yet another reason to want to upgrade, while still appeasing quasi-background processing requests for older iPhones with the messaging system they are releasing in 3.0 OS.
MGZ
I think for now background task ability is more of a liability than an asset. It has branded G1 as unable to get through a day and it will tarnish the reputation of the Pre.
Until batery tech, etc.. can catch up to what we want to do Push notification will give some of the same result without the drawbacks.
I don’t think the iPhone could handle this right now – I’m running the 3.0b4 and it sucks battery like it’s nobody’s business. A more gentle path would be to initially provide services for basic background use cases such as timers, queues, and triggers.
For example, I keep thinking how great it would be if an application could be granted access to where you’ve been over the past 24 hours. Apple could enable an preference that polls for position every N minutes. It would also be excellent if applications could subscribe to specific proximity events. And of course, timer events are a must so applications can wake-up and do some occasional work.
$.02
Definitely agreed, not to mention these types of applications would not use much CPU
When I’m listening to music on my iphone, and I get an email, I hear a little chime and I know to check it. Then, i switch over to email, and I’m still hearing my music. Its running in the background. So, if its possible for the apple apps to run in the background, it is possible for apple to allow other developers to do this, they just have to decide to do it.
Apple already made fun on Windows Mobile while they were claiming that their ‘No Background Processes’ is a brilliant idea, now it is very obvious that without this small thing, you pretty much can’t do anything like an organizer or instant messaging or anything similar.
You have to feel sorry for Apple. Every time they do a presentation of all their amazing new products, instead of us all saying ‘WOW – well done!’, we all say “where is feature X that some blogger made up one Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago?
“
Background tasks are necessary for some apps to even be useful. If they open this possibility up I think we’ll see alot of really cool apps hit the market.
If Nokia/Symbian can do it, why can’t Apple?
On-demand paging anyone?
It’s all about battery life.
I’m sick of people complaining about poor battery life on the iPhone. By now we all know the battery life isn’t great and needs to be improved. But I should be able to choose how I want to drain my battery. Give me the option to turn on backgrounding for specific apps. Also provide a mode that optimizes battery life for people that would rather charge their phones less often. I plug in my phone every night and I’m sure most people do too. It would be nice if I didn’t have to do a nightly charge but it’s become routine.
You’re sick of people complaining about battery life on iPhone, but you want Apple to turn on a feature that is going to absolutely, positively increase the number of complaints about battery life?
I think the Battery Life on the iPhone currently is actually really good. I turn off 3G which I never use and only pop wifi on when I need to and my phone will last about 5-6 days between charges. Which I consider pretty damn good going.
Really it´s time to have a good chat application runing on my iphone
its shows that the majority here doesn’t know the power of background apps. I don’t think I can go a 2 minutes on my phone without putting some apps in the background:
1) downloading a file from the web with opera mobile9 and a text comes in/ an IM from live messenger/yahoo/aim: i just switch over do my business and switch back.
2)unzipping a large file and don’t want to watch the progress bar I put it in the background and something else
3)streaming music from the web I just easily put the player in the background and do something else while listening to the stream
4)using my calculator and want to check something online
5)going through my RSS reader and want to view the full page online
6)running WMWiFiRouter in the background to send net access to my laptop,friend’s latop, and can still text or do what ever i want on my phone
7) and the list goes on.
thats the power of background apps, the user is not stuck doing one thing at a time.
doing notification is only for net access apps like IM clients and the like, what about running two calculators at the same (hehehe, this might sound strange but i find myself doing it….when I have to use 2 or more formulas to find an answer or do calculations with one and use the other to graph.)
I’ll stay with the plaform that allows me to do what i want and does not stand in my way.
So back to playing with your LEGO?
Honestly, I don’t get. It’s got more than enough power and Apple be underestimating the savviness of their customers. Regarding the battery life knock, my first gen iPhone with BT and WiFi off most of the time gives me very good results. So good I haven’t wanted to upgrade to 3G. A 3.2mp camera with autofocus would move me though…
OMG- I guess we always need to complain or write articles about something. Missing features or poorly executed features are easy targets to keep writing about.
As for the Pre, it’s not even for sale. How can you compare a device that’s sold 20 million to vaporware that’s sold literally zero????? That’s like saying Microsoft will make a device that can x, y & z more than iPhone in 2010 and then start comparing it to the iPhone- doesn’t make sense.
But yes, someday and maybe within a couple of years from now, someone will make a device as good or if not better than the iPhone.
The Pre may not be for sale just yet, but it is real (in manufacturing by the hundreds of thousands right this moment), the SDK is out (in beta), there are video presentations and a book on O’Rielly Rough Cuts and the team that built it _invented_ the concept of a PDA and are run by mad geniuses.
If you know JavaScript and HTML5 you can develop mind blowing “super-AJAX” app on Pre. Sprint is cheaper than AT&T and you won’t look like a drone when you whip out your Pre in a world full of iPhones drones. They’ll be going “hey, let me see that ..woah.” Point out that music from iTunes is DRM-free and will play just fine on the Pre and they’ll start counting the months left in their service contracts.
Honestly, if Apple could provide a Core Location daemon ( http://www.idea...ocation-daemon/ ), I’d be super-happy with Push Notifications.
Sure, push notifications aren’t as good as native background app support, but I could manage to get by – as I have done already without them.
Despite location detection being the killer app of mobile devices, its limitation to foreground tasks only inherently cripples its usefulness.
My HTC-supplied background switcher for Windows Mobile is simple. Push X once to background an app. Push and hold X for around a half second to kill the app. Push the twisty to see a list of apps and their CPU & RAM chunks. Two widgets and two simple gestures let me manage everything. *And* I have cut and paste.
@wmluvr: actually, all windows mobile apps can run in the background by defualt. its the OS not the app.
@Taylor Gerring: you said you can get by without background thats cool for you man, but I couldn’t….then whats the sense of having a “smart” phone if you can only do one thing at a time? thats not a smart phone then, is it?
@MG Siegler:
for some reason this is funny to me: “Apple is definitely trying to come up with a way to offer background support for third-party apps” I thought they said 1 app at a time was the best solution….what gives?
“Apple’s solution for this would likely be to limit the number of third-party apps that could run in the background at once, says my source” same like how Windows 7 Starter is going to be?……what a notification is going to pop up…”too much apps running, close one”?
If only there was a smartphone that has twice as much market share as the iPhone and has supported multi-threaded processes for years.
Maybe you guys should write more about this new “push notifications” thing that the iPhone is talking about doing at some point. It’s not like anyone has ever tackled that one one a mobile phone either.
i love apple and all its products.
I hope they are able to do this because it will contribute to better product usability on the iPhone.
Here are is the priority of design decisions that went into the iPhone:
1. Profit Margin
2. Profit Margin
3. Profit Margin
In this day & age, a board full of people ranting about “multitasking”!!! This problem has been solved … look around … tons of other phones can be multitasked with & the battery lasts for days…
The iPhone has a cheap processor and a crappy battery. The Apps HAVE to be designed to “feel” faster etc…
Has anyone else noticed the delays in screen switching & content loading ….
what’s to talk about? enable it and let it sink or swim. what’s the matter, apple? are you that protective of your operating system that were a stack to slow the whole thing down a couple percent it would be a chink in your proprietary armor?
it’s amazing how much marketing apple does of very simple things like this, and cut and paste. it’s a couple of examples of a company with such loyal followers, that when these talks are delivered in front of a huge screen with someone in front of it waxing poetic, you have people believing they’re innovations and shining examples of progressive thinking, simply because they likely never heard someone talk about these concepts to the length they are.
hats off to apple for being a marketing powerhouse, but this is silly. whether you like windows mobile or not, or any number of mobile operating systems, running multiple applications at once with task switching is there because it’s a necessity the people designing the software knew was integral to the user experience. saying it’s not a big deal to go without is pointless pacification and serves no constructive purpose for advancing a platform. don’t be complacent, DEMAND IT. it’s STANDARD. and it was needed yesterday.
Symbian’s had background apps for years. Palm has it (or will have soon), Android has it, and even Windows Mobile has it! iPhone lacks this and other basic stuff, but you still buy it, coz it’s cute.
Ok, it’s got some nice apps, but that’s because a lot of people bought it, so devs focus on it. Ok, nice store, but that’s beyond the point.
If the feature (bg app) will consume more battery, just explain this to the user and let him decide whether he want’s to enable it or not.
I wouldn’t mind having to charge my phone every day, if it would bring me some benefits. Other might think this is annoying.
Just let us decide!
thanks
As always, the devil will be in the details. I know for me, having Apple limit the type of apps that can be background enabled won’t be much of an improvement. And if they limit the number of apps that can run in the background to anything less than 3 or 4 won’t be much of an improvement for me. Looking at how I’d like to use the phone at times, I see would envision all of the following running when I went for a jog:
Playing my music or streaming music via Slacker, Last.fm, Pandora, etc (App1)
My Interval Clock/Counter (App2)
My Jogging App to track my runs (App3)
Or how about just working during the day:
Skype
IM App
Browser from time to time
Music if I’m traveling (local or via slacker, etc)
I know and can accept that doing so would drain my batter big time, especially if pulling music from the cloud, but at least I would like to have that choice.
So I can only hope and wait to see what they decide to implement (if anything).
end of the world is near….
Packaging fail, Chinese ppl over did it.
http://www.epic.../load/8-1-0-374
thanks.
The three biggest requests from users and developers since iPhone O.S. 1.0 have been: (1) backgrounding, (2) push, and (3) cut/paste. Apple has been addressing these in due course while taking care to preserve a general level of quality in user experience. I think the worst Apple can be accused of is “slow walking” certain platform features (especially push) in order to preserve their first-mover advantage as developers of emerging applications (e.g. the “universal communicator” interface).
Unfortunately for Apple, it’s dictator mentality regarding the OS is biting them on the behind. They decided not to grace the world with background tasks until THEY are ready. Unfortunately the world has passed them by and provided background tasks and user replaceable batteries. Palm did one better with an improved UI and Google is coming out with G2 with vastly improved hardware.
Like Palm, Apple sat on its laurels and slowly added necessary features, pushing its own products more than Don King. Now they are fumbling, stumbling and bumbling trying to get simple things like IM to work in the background. It’s of critical importance because people love Blackberry Messenger and the like because US phone companies are gouging customers with ultra high SMS text messaging costs – the price has doubled while data transfer has gotten much cheaper.
Good luck, Mr. Jobs. Your days of exploiting your proprietary using customer base are soon coming to a close with the iPhone. You’ve given the competition time to catch up and they are now surpassing you while you try to undo what you’ve done… will be interesting to see what happens.