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I wonder if the OP got the answer they were looking for?
Having read all the above, I'm seriously considering getting rid of my Google phone and moving to Windows Mango.
Yet, but the odds are stacking up.I've never, ever come across a malware infection on a mobile device first-hand, or known anyone who's had one.
Daughter #1 wants an iPhone now and if I can get a 3gs cheap enough I may actually get her one.
puppypower:
Graham, that must be via push notifications though rather than it actually running in the background and downloading your mail. Which means the e-mail provider has to have a server to send the notification to your phone.
Yup. But it's not some Appley-magic server. It's just an [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Exchange_Server ]Exchange Server[/url] doing [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_e-mail ]Push Email[/url] - as used by any Exchange client, [u]including Android[/u].
If your email provider doesn't support "push email" then you can instead set up "pull email", where your iPhone will connect to email every X minutes and check if there are new messages.
Awesome, I now have e-mail notifications working! Nice. Basically no need for "proper" background apps I don't reckon.
I'm still not sure why you think this isn't a "proper" multitasking. A background task is receiving email while you do other things in the foreground.
CountZero:
Not entirely sure wot 'block text' means, but.... {huge [u]block[/u] of text removed}
😆
Cougar:
I generally respond to try and correct wildly inaccurate claims, but I'll do that irrespective of topic if I think someone is mistaken or deliberately misleading.
Ye. I respect your position and lack of rhetoric Cougar. I try to do likewise - but oddly, for this particular topic, that makes us "fanbois".
I was rabbiting on about cycle paths the other day and no one accused me of being a Cycle Path Fanboi or having shares in tarmac companies. 😀
joke
Yes, just not up to your usual standard and more akin to a certain other haterz, one in particular.
Gee is a psychopath fanboi. 🙂
Gee is a psychopath fanboi.
Y'know, I thought of making that joke, but decided it was too bad a pun for 10am. Well done for taking up the slack dublD.
Graham, it's not "proper" background process running cos a server (not my phone) is sending a notification to my phone that I have a new e-mail. And the e-mail is not "running" in the background. Admittedly the result is the same. And yes I have set up an exchange server rather than default version now, ta.
Not really on any "side" just from a technical point of view, it's not a normal definition of something running in the background (so if you are a developer you can't make your app run while it's not in the foreground, except to do limited things - which in my opinion isn't necessarily a bad thing - many years ago I had a symbian phone that used to run out of battery v quickly when I forgot to kill the lemmings game before I did something else, nice) - and everyone seemed to be saying different stuff about whether ios can run background processes, so I stupidly jumped into the discussion. And then you accused me of being an Android lover and I was amused 🙂
Though I wouldn't mind being able to have those widget thingys that can sit on the middle of your "home page" like you have on Android. Then my life would be complete.
Right I must do some work now. I *knew* I shouldn't get involved in this thread except to say I love my iphone and I know if I shifted to android I would regret it.
Graham, it's not "proper" background process running cos a server (not my phone) is sending a notification to my phone that I have a new e-mail.
Yes - that is how ALL [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_e-mail ]Push Email[/url] works. On every phone and client.
Not really on any "side" just from a technical point of view, it's not a normal definition of something running in the background
If there is nothing in the background then what do you think receives the push notification? Or indeed does the pull/fetch if you have it set up that way?
Background processes != background user-level apps. You're arguing about different things.
There has to be a process listening for push email, same as for SMSes, phone calls, etc. Same as keeping a clock running, maintaining a bluetooth pairing, downloading an app, and so on.
Having user-level apps running in the background is a different proposition. Can you set a slow page loading in a web browser and background it to do something else, then come back in a few minutes' time to a fully loaded page? Or is it where you left it? Or has it closed the page completely?
Can you listen to music, have a GPS app track your walk, surf the net all at the same time?
"Proper" multitasking is a compromise on any mobile device, as resources are at a premium (and programmers have got complacent). I expect there will come a time where this isn't the case, and with the advent of multi-core CPUs in handsets I reckon we're a step closer to this.
The push notification server on the phone. Which runs in the background, yes. I guess what I'm getting at is that if you write your own app it can't do stuff in the background (except limited stuff as mentioned above). And I hadn't really thought through how e-mail worked - so you are probably right about that. And I know you are going to say why would you want your app (a different app from e-mail, let's just forget e-mail) to run in the background and I kind of agree with you. It's just lots of developers don't. It seems to me apple have managed to get around not properly allowing arbitrary things to run in the background, with push notifications and allowing location and music stuff. Not really arguing with you to be honest!
Background processes != background user-level apps.
My first example was using multiple background user-level apps: running multiple GPS tracker apps, while listening to music (via the TuneIn Radio app for example), and surfing on Singletrack in the foreground.
Apparently that wasn't "real multi-tasking" - which is where pp started talking about email.
Thankyou cougar, you said that so much more succinctly than me.
It seems to me apple have managed to get around not properly allowing arbitrary things to run in the background, with push notifications and allowing location and music stuff.
Yeah, now we are getting to it. The crux is the Apple APIs that it provides to developers do not allow apps to do [i]anything[/i] they like in the background. That would be absolutely disastrous for performance and battery life.
It's a pretty smart approach to managed multi-tasking on a low-power embedded device IMHO.
Sorry, edited that post to add a bit more info.
Agreed Graham. I think it's fairly sensible too. Husband doesn't and he knows seriously a lot about this stuff as he develops things that is critical to all this sort of stuff (vnc type stuff) for every mobile platform going. I would argue he is biased though as these restrictions make his life difficult! And I don't think anyone would argue that apps though be able to do anything they like in the background, that would be madness.
And cougar, yes ios can do most of the things you say above these days as location services and music are allowed to run in the background, plus apps are allowed to download stuff in the background for up to 10 mins.
Anyway I now know why I don't post on forums when I am meant to be working, it is because I am crap at multitasking :-), and I have now got nothing done this morning.
The crux is the Apple APIs that it provides to developers do not allow apps to do anything they like in the background. That would be absolutely disastrous for performance and battery life.
As I understand it, Android's approach is to give apps more free reign, but for the OS to carry power of veto to start stopping lower-priority processes if it needs resources. Services (eg, 'playing music') are separate from Activities which interact with the user (eg, displaying the music player); so in my example above, using a GPS tracker in the background would keep tracking your position but when you pulled the app to foreground you'd have to wait a moment for the screen to redraw your track.
I've no idea about Apple's memory management, but from what you've said here it doesn't sound wholly dissimilar.
Husband doesn't and he knows seriously a lot about this stuff as he develops things that is critical to all this sort of stuff (vnc type stuff) for every mobile platform going.
Yep, I'm an embedded software engineer myself, though not phones (yet).
Don't the VNC apps maintain a connection in the background? (Sadly [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/just-forced-a-fresh-java-update-onto-my-iphone-4 ]my iPhone is currently "resting"[/url] so I can't check).
Cougar: yeah it can do all those things in the background.
I've no idea about Apple's memory management, but from what you've said here it doesn't sound wholly dissimilar.
Think so. Apple let apps freeze their state when they get backgrounded and then resume it when they come back to the foreground.
Typical example: playing a game and you get an incoming call. Most games will freeze state when you switch to the phone app. When you return to the game it will unfreeze and carry on from exactly where you left it.
The background APIs allow apps to keep certain small parts running in the background at all times (e.g. music, gps, downloads, long running tasks etc).
I don't think the iPhone ever auto-kills any apps - but I could be wrong on that.
my phone is HTC, like the bike team