ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[John Johansen <john.johansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/02/2015 03:10 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Alan Bell wrote on 01/10/15 12:25:
> 
>> I quite agree, even if it is a user preference it would be fine,
> 
> Making background processing a user preference would be the worst
> possible approach. It would mean sometimes having to choose between
> battery life and an app that works. It would mean users experiencing
> different things, from the same app on different devices, and not
> understanding why, never realizing that it was because they twiddled
> the setting a year ago to see what it did and then forgot about it. It
> would mean app developers often not experiencing their own apps the
> same way that most of their users were. It would mean silly nag
> screens in some apps prompting you to change your multitasking
> setting. And for a combination of those reasons, it would require
> people to learn what "background processing" is, and make a decision
> about it, when most of them have far, far better things to do with
> their lives.
> 
>> I would choose to have multitasking when the screen is on. I find
>> it rather frustrating on slow connections to be unable to
>> background the web browser to let it load something while I check
>> on other things.
> 
>> ...
> 
> Notice how Safari on an iPhone doesn't have the same problem, despite
> not multitasking. Half-load a page, switch to another app, switch back
> a while later, and the whole page will usually be loaded. (Except
> maybe bits that were to be loaded by scripts that were frozen.)
> 
> So, multitasking is not the only solution to that problem.
> 
Actually ios has background multitasking and they have been expanding
what is allowed since ios 4.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html

and apple cheats with their own apps, they had a slew of bug complaints
in ios7 about safari not doing it background multitasking leading to
all kinds of failures when people switched away from safari.

Sure they have clever hand off to system services, but they recognize
and are expanding use cases for background multitasking.