iPhone 4.0, hold the multitasking.

If you asked just about any geek what is on their wishlist for iPhone OS 4.0 they will more than likely tell you they want multitasking. They want the ability to run multiple apps at once, and switch between them as they so please. Their justification for this wish? “Well… Andriod and WebOS do it, why not the iPhone!?” Sure the Palm Pre and Andriod phones can run multiple apps at the same time, but the question can they do it well. In my experience, no. No they can’t.

I want to start off in saying, I have never had the chance to sit down and really test a new Palm device nor an Android 2.0 device. I have however owned the HTC Magic (myTouch 3g in the US) which gave me my first taste of multitasking, and lets just say it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Obviously the morning I got that phone, I spent a significantly large chunk of time in the Android Market downloading apps. Little did I know, half the apps I would open would stay open in the background without my knowledge. By the afternoon, my battery was on the verge of dying and the device was crawling along at shockingly slow speeds. All because my Twitter app stayed open, last.fm stayed open, my weather app stayed open, etc. The only way I could figure out how to fix this, was to reboot my handset. There is (to my knowledge at least) no task manager in Android. Restarting my device became a daily ritual. A week later, I was sick of it (along with T-Mobile’s shocking customer service, but thats another story) and made the switch over to AT&T and the iPhone. Sure I can’t listen to last.fm and check my email at the same time anymore, but I have a stabler, more polished, all in all better device. I don’t want Apple ruining the absolutely exceptional experience I’m having by forcing underdeveloped, unreliable multitasking upon me. Take your time Apple. Wait for the hardware to become powerful enough, and for an implementation that works. In the mean time, I’m happy.

Now I do understand that WebOS handles multitasking in a rather slick way and DOES allow you to quit applications. I do want to get my hands on a new Palm device soon and test just how well this works. Also, if I am wrong about the lack of a task manager in Andriod, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

-Omar

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