Win Phone 7 to Limit Multitasking

[Pangloss]

Fascinating news out of Redmond today -- apparently Windows Phone 7 will NOT support user application multitasking. It will be limited in basically the same way as the iPhone OS.

 

I've been telling students and friends for over a year now that the fact that Apple limits this in the iPhone OS is a GOOD thing. General reactions have ranged from tolerant nods to outright scoffing, but I've maintained that the theory is sound from an HCI perspective, from a safety perspective, and even from a "common sense" perspective. So I'm feeling a little vindicated to see this news from Microsoft, because apparently they agree.

 

Ironically, the rumor mill has it that iPhone OS 4.0 will include multitasking. (lol)

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-39728-San-Jose-Technology-Examiner~y2010m3d16-Windows-Phone-7-Series-limited-multitasking-no-memory-card-support

[bascule]

I use Backgrounder on my jailbroken iPhone constantly. It's a mod that allows you to background applications and configure policies as to what applications should run into the background per default. Backgrounder reveals the true nature of the iPhone: the underlying OS supports multitasking, but the ability to multitask 3rd party apps is prevented through user interface restrictions.

 

IMO this is a huge limitation of the iPhone OS which Android has solved beautifully and the iPhone "dev"/jailbreaking community has provided a relatively elegant solution to.

 

One of my most common use cases on the iPhone is listening to music and doing something else. I prefer not to use Apple's built in "iPod" functionality but instead stream my music most of the time. I used to use Pandora but now I use an app called GrooveShark.

 

I imagine this will hit iPad users right way... what if they want to listen to Pandora (or any other streaming music app) and browse the web at the same time?

 

Fortunately iPhone OS/"iOS" 4.0 has been rumored to include native multitasking for quite some time.

 

That said, I can't see WinPhone 7 getting anywhere. I'm glad Microsoft has finally admitted that Windows Mobile 6.x is a dead end and extremely antequated and clunky in the age of iPhone and Android, but I don't see WinPhone garnering considerable market share so much as trying to catch up to where the iPhone was almost 3 years ago.

[Pangloss]

Yes, it's pretty hard to imagine the iPad not being able to run more than one full-blown app at a time. Especially since that upcoming HP tablet is pretty slick, and will presumably run Windows software right out of the box (e.g. Kindle for Windows).

 

I've heard that "I wish I could run Pandora in the background" comment before. It's a valid point but even so most multitasking is really just application-switching, and I don't think the iPhone would be where it is today without those HCI limitations that actually enhance its simple appeal without greatly limiting the user. They could allow 3rd party apps to "minimize" themselves for limited background execution similar to the way the iPod software runs. So you'd basically get one "slot" for a "multitasking" app, and a little icon to represent it on the title bar so you wouldn't forget that it was draining the battery (and perhaps the same double-button-click interface). But I suppose it may just be easier to remove the multitasking restrictions and then weigh the screaming about battery life. (Sure, the hackers don't complain, but they already understand battery life. Open this door to casual users and it'll be a different story.)

 

I've never seen an Android phone but I'm curious how it handles multitasking. Some of the things I wonder about is whether the number of apps is limited (i.e. not by RAM but by a fixed number), how visible background tasks are (does the user know they left something running?), and how easy it is to switch. These were the major issues with multitasking in Windows Mobile 6.5.

[bascule]

The latest news about Winphone 7 is it won't support copy/paste... whaaa?

 

Seems like Microsoft is trying to invent iPhone OS 1.0

[Pangloss]

Ran across an interesting paper today while mining the ACM database for something unrelated. It's entitled "On the Potential of Limitation-oriented Malware Detection and Prevention Techniques on Mobile Phones", and it can be found via Google Scholar in the January issue of the International Journal of Security and its Applications.

 

In a nutshell, the authors suggest that operating system restrictions in smartphones are helping to prevent the rapid spread of malware. (They recognize that malware is not currently a serious problem, but note that the threat is expected to rise with the increasing functionality and popularity of the devices.) An interesting caveat to this finding is that while these restrictions may impede malware developers, they also impede the development of software that detects and prevents malware on the device.

 

The authors also propose a novel detection scheme for finding malware on mobile devices based on a signature approach by monitoring power usage and mapping it against application usage over time.

Edited March 19, 2010 by Pangloss
typos