Multi Tasking, Single Tasking and the iPhone SDK
by Ewan Spence
It’s taken some time, but finally the SDK has been released for Apple’s iPhone. While there are bound to be conversations around what can or can’t be done, the locked down distribution method or the costs involved (all topics I’m sure we’ll be discussing here over the next week or so). What intrigues me most about the third party applications that are going to be made available is the fact that they will only be allowed to run in the foreground.
That’s an incredibly limiting constraint. For a long time the Palm OS had this limit, firstly because the Dragonball Z processors could only handle 4 threads in total on the original Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 devices, but as the technology increased through Moore’s Law, Palm developers were continuing to fake it, and try to find ways around the legacy thread limit. It meant that if you were in an Instant Messaging client, the simple matter of switching away to check your email dropped your connection to the IM system, a potentially disastrous result, and not something that should have been happening in PDA’s and smartphones in the 21st century.
And now Apple is going down the same route,
In this world of always-on, always connected, internet aware devices, the potential creativity of developers in using a mobile device is going to be subdued. Yes we’re going to see a lot of games, a lot of applications that pull info from the internet, but are we going to see anything drop dead gorgeous when they will only work when on display? I don’t think so.
And I’m pretty sure that even if developers manage to find a way to get round the problem, Apple, being the gatekeepers to the official distribution system, will quietly delete from the catalog any application that seeks to push their arbitrary limits.
Does Apple know best about its iPhone and the rapidly growing eco-system around it? Or should someone who has purchased the ‘jesusphone’ have the right to do whatever they like with their device? I always side with the later, so the release of the SDK, while welcome, is far from the final step in the process.
I hope this limit is lifted before the SDK release and distribution system becomes official.
