ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Michał Sawicz <michal.sawicz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

W dniu 01.10.2015 o 18:27, Craig Harper pisze:
> We are all behind Ubuntu Touch, if where not we would not commenting on
> this problem.  We understand that its not going to happen overnight. 
> But this is not the first time the conversation about Multitasking has
> been bought up.  We all understand there is good programmers and bad
> programmers, this is why you have application reviews, star rating and
> other such things to give users informed decisions about the application
> before you download it.

I really don't think this is about good and bad developers, we want to
make the platform shine, and provide the developers - as easy as
possible - ways to integrate with it. To this end, we want to provide
services to handle as many of the use cases as possible. Which is why I
asked to change how we discuss this.

> Still the fact remains, that the a modern mobile operating system
> without Multitasking is really hard to swallow even for die hard open
> source enthusiast like me, and trying to get developers to develop
> exciting new applications for an OS that keeps one hand tied behind your
> bad, is not only frustrating but in the long term is damaging to the
> whole Ubuntu Touch.  The whole idea if im not mistaken is have a unified
> platform, across desktops, tablets and phones, write the application
> once and its works in across the board.  That means you should take into
> consideration your slowest and resource restricted environment first. 
> So based on today technology we are talking mobile, we also know that
> multitasking is not a option, its a requirement, as a desktop without
> multitasking is called windows (sorry had to get that in) but seriously
> surly the whole multitasking should have been fixed in the begging and
> not wait for disappointed users to pick this up..

I don't think multitasking is the right word here. And as you say, we
need to take the most resource constrained device into account today,
and that is mobile. To make it work the best possible, we decided to
stop processing UI for apps that you can't see. We'll use the same
approach in windowed environments for software that can support it
(we've made that a requirement for all software on mobile). It will save
you battery and free resources for the apps that you can actually see
and interact with. Things that need to be processed in the background to
fulfil the user experience will ideally be handled by central services
designed to do the tasks in the most efficient way possible.

> So personally, i think the only way out of this is to create a
> multitasking service, when you start an application that needs this
> service, ubuntu notifies the users asking them permission to allow this
> application to multitask, you could even push user feedback at the same
> time to the screen, so they can make informed decision, this would work
> across all platforms, be that desktop, tablet or mobile, thus allowing
> Ubuntu to keep its main goal.

I agree this might ultimately be needed for a subset of apps that have
needs exotic enough that no central service will be able to cater for.
But that should be used as a last resort, not the default. If we enable
this today for all apps to use as they please, we'll lose the incentive
to centralize all the other use cases.

> I like Alen Bell posting about the UI experience of this once you have
> chosen to allow an application to have multitasking

I certainly like a per-app approach more than a system-wide setting, but
still would avoid that whenever possible. Most importantly because this
means that people who care about their battery usage more will get a
worse experience from the app.

> one of the particular strengths of the Ubuntu Touch UI is that you can
> see what apps are running and close the things you don't want. This is
> considerably easier on Ubuntu than it is on Android (long press of the
> button on the right that nobody knows what it does, then see your list
> of apps and wonder how to close them, then give up)

At least on stock Android it seems quite as accessible as on Ubuntu to
me - no long press needed. The biggest problem there, IMO, is that you
don't actually know if you really closed the app. Permanent / constant
notifications keep the app running even though you swiped it away, and
the "Force close" button buried deep in the settings app is even scarier.

> On Ubuntu it is go
> to the switcher and swipe up or down to kill things. This could be
> enhanced, to renice the applications. Drag them up a bit to make them
> faster, drag down to slow them to a crawl, swipe all the way down to
> kill nicely and swipe up to nuke it from orbit with a kill -9 (it is the
> only way to be sure)

Explaining this to users would be a a very difficult task IMO, we can do
better than that.

-- 
Michał Sawicz <michal.sawicz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Canonical Ltd.

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