On multitasking

AppleInsider published a story earlier in the month reporting that some people with insider knowledge have revealed that the iPhone OS 4.0 will support multitasking for third-party apps. They then followed up that claim with more detail on how exactly this multitasking was going to work in the user interface.

I’m going to go right out and say I believe this to be false, because if it is true it means Apple will be taking a step backwards with exactly how beautifully simple the iPhone OS experience is. I may be proven wrong and AppleInsider proven correct, but if so I think it will be a huge mistake for Apple to make.

First, I feel I need to explain what multitasking is, since it’s a confusing issue. Multitasking in the mobile software world is not, as you might believe, to do with performing two or more tasks at once. It is simply the ability to leave one application running while attending to another one. This may seem obvious to some, but a recent attempt at humour that compared the features of the iPad to the features of a stone claimed that a stone was capable of multitasking… exactly how they justified this I’m unsure, but any person who knew what multitasking actually meant would not make this claim.

Tech critics have said from the beginning that a major drawback in the iPhone OS is the lack of multitasking. When the iPad was announced, it too was criticised for the same reason. Yet I believe that it is precisely this inability to multitask, and the simplified model of using apps, that makes the iPhone and iPad so brilliantly easy to use. Apple has other reasons for limiting multitasking too: it conserves battery life, and makes it more difficult for malicious code to be run. Simply put, without multitasking the iPhone is more user-friendly, more battery-efficient, and more secure than other mobile operating systems.

The Google Android OS and the Blackberry OS are considered Apple’s main rivals, and both these operating systems feature multitasking in the sense of allowing multiple apps to run at once. Yet this is deceptive, since both Android and Blackberry handsets can only display a single app at a time (as far as I am aware). Android and Blackberry users need to know the difference between quitting an app and switching between apps, and need to be aware of resource management in keeping their multiple apps running smoothly. The iPhone user, being only capable of running a single app at a time, does not need to concern themselves with this at all. On all three handsets, you can only attend to a single app at once, but somehow the ability to leave an app running in the background is seen as an advantage. Additionally, Apple encourages the apps to seamlessly interact with each other where required, and the push notifications introduced in iPhone OS 3.0 means leaving apps running is less of an issue.

A significant attraction to keeping an app running while you attend another is that to quit the first app and start it again would be an annoying inconvenience. It might take a significant amount of time to start, or it might not begin at the same place you left it. These are valid concerns, which is precisely why Apple’s guidelines emphasise quick start-ups and state saving. To quit an iPhone app and start it again should not be any more inconvenient than switching between already running apps.

With this in mind, let’s examine the multitasking method that AppleInsider claims to know about.

Those familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 said that the user interface will resemble Apple’s desktop Expose [sic] feature, in that a key combination — reportedly hitting the Home button twice — will trigger an expose-like interface that brings up a series of icons representing the currently running apps, allowing users to quickly select the one they want to switch to directly. When a selection is made, the iPhone OS zooms out of the Expose task manager and transitions to that app.

So the proposed method for switching between apps is double-pressing the home button, then tapping the app to switch to. The method for quitting an app and starting a new one is to single-press the home button, then tap the app to switch to. As such, this proposed multitasking method is actually more complicated than just quitting an app and opening another. What’s more, if they use a double-press this means the existing double-press functionality (which opens a specified app such as the phone or the camera) will be replaced. Due to the poor usability both of these observations represent, I believe that even if multitasking is included in iPhone OS 4.0, it will not behave like AppleInsider’s source claims.

What it comes down to is this: do you require multitasking just to make up for the poor performance and state-saving of your handsets’ apps? I certainly don’t. For me, the existing model Apple uses actually allows me to do everything that a “multitasking” handset can do, all while saving battery life and providing a more logical and user-friendly experience.

In short, I will be disappointed if Apple introduces third-party multitasking with iPhone OS 4.0. The lack of multitasking is a feature, not a problem to be fixed. Apple redefined the way we use mobile devices with the iPhone, and they are currently redefining the way we use computers with the iPad. It seems counter-productive to then go and make their operating systems more like the competition’s.

Update: Andy Ihnatko has posted a commentary on multitasking. In it, he describes a situation which I have neglected: a third-party app, like a music player, that you want to play in the background while working in other apps. Admittedly my view that there will not be any multitasking in the next iPhone OS fails to remedy this.

Yet I still believe the method that AppleInsider posts will be nothing more than a rumour: it just complicates things way more than Apple would ever let things get. Instead, I propose an alternative: Apple adds a feature to the iPhone SDK that gives developers the ability to let their users explicitly request the app continue to run in the background. Then, there is no need to switch between running apps using an Exposé-like feature: you’ll just press the Home button to return to the Home screen, and tapping the app’s icon again will return you to the app in its still-running state. It needs to work exactly like the iPod app, or it will be too weird.

For example, with Andy Ihnatko’s music-streaming example app, you might be playing music then hit the Home button. Instead of quitting and returning to the Home screen, a message pops up asking “Would you like to continue playing music after leaving the app?” Hitting “Continue playing” will allow the music to keep streaming while you run other apps, being interrupted in a similar way to the iPod app’s playing, while hitting “Quit” will quit the app as normal. This means the experience is no more confusing to the user, and instead the responsibility is put on the developer to make the experience work perfectly, as it should be. Similar methods could work for messaging apps: “Would you like to stay signed in after leaving the app?”

I suppose my initial disgust at the thought of multitasking mostly belongs to AppleInsider’s explanation of how it will work. There are other ways Apple could implement it without damaging the user experience. But once the user is consciously aware of switching between running and non-running apps, the user experience fails dramatically compared to what we currently have.

Update (9 April)
OK, iPhone OS 4 has been presented, and as predicted AppleInsider was wrong… mostly. I’ll cover my full thoughts on iPhone OS 4 in another post soon.

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