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Coming Soon to Pastebot: Music in the Background

28 points by stilist 16y ago

drivebyacct2 16y ago
It's not a feature, it's a workaround for a limited multitasking model.
- rtrunck 16y ago
  I agree. They labeled it an elegant solution. More appropriately, I believe, it is an elegant hack.
- veeti 16y ago
  As someone who's developed a similar app for Android, I'm actually a bit surprised that they have to resort to such workarounds in the first place.
- mustpax 16y ago
  On top of that, it's liable to be rejected by Apple as an abuse of public APIs. Just last week there was an article on HN about a guy who got rejected for using the VoIP background API for an IRC app. Which actually is bending the rules a lot less than playing a silent audio file on loop in order to claim to be an audio client.
  - hboon 16y ago
    They were already rejected for playing a silent audio file. But this post mentions they have re-submitted the app, allowing users to play their own audio files. So this is 100% legitimate.
mortenjorck 16y ago
I'm a happy Pastebot customer and use it all the time, but I don't think I'll be using this feature. It's ingenious, but it just feels like the kind of hack I associate with less UX-focused platforms. I'm actually kind of glad the silent version wasn't approved, though. As logically strange as having to play music while using clipboard sync is, having another music app interrupt that sync is almost worse. I'd rather Tapbots had gone the Task Completion API route, where they can run whatever they want in the background for ten minutes (what the Colloquy IRC client uses). That kind of functionality has an intuitive, physical analog in timed light switches; one can't say as much for a light switch that requires the stereo to be playing. Apple really needs to increase that time limit, though.
- jra101 16y ago
  They've said (in the comments section of their post) that this will not get interrupted by other music apps. They tested with iTunes and Pandora running.
- Skroob 16y ago
  Task completion is unreliable for background processes. It's meant for finishing something quickly before an app goes into an inactive state. The OS is likely to kill the app at any time if it's taking too long or other apps need the resources. Unfortunately there just isn't a nice way for Pastebot to do what they want to do. It's one of those edge cases where none of the available options for multitasking are useful. They're doing the best they can, but this is still a really hacky solution and I wouldn't depend on it staying in the App Store.
  - ugh 16y ago
    I think Apple doesn’t have to be quite as restrictive. They could allow developers to do some general purpose multitasking and take steps limit its use. They might only allow general purpose multitasking if it’s off by default and the user has to explicitly opt-in. They might add something in their settings app where you can turn turn general purpose multitasking on and off for each individual app which uses it. They might reject all apps which use general purpose multitasking when the dedicated methods would do, too. They might reject all apps which use general purpose multitasking without providing any functionality to the user. They might require all apps which use this general purpose multitasking to have some gracious failure mode if memory really gets low and the app has to be quit. (I’m not so sure about this last one. You would have to notify the user because otherwise the experience would be terrible, i.e. suddenly and without any apparent reason or warning Pastebot would stop to work. But adding a modal dialog would also lead to a terrible experience, they would have to make it more subtle which in turn can be easily overlooked. How does Android handle this?)
    - Skroob 16y ago
      There's a lot of ways they could go, definitely. But they're trying to keep it as simple as they can, from the user's perspective anyway. The best feature of the three multitasking styles they allow is that I don't have to think about it, which can't be said about the Pastebot solution, nor really any of your options either.
jrockway 16y ago
Release for Android instead? The iPhone is dying.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Ha! I'm no iPhone fanboy but increased competition->(slower growth,market share)!=dying. They just sold like 18,000,000,000 of these things in a month, did they not?
Synaesthesia 16y ago
So just to get this straight. You have to have music playing from Pastebot in the background for it to remain active? (even if it's a silent song) If you stop the music, does iOS freeze the app? Well luckily the iPhone has a very long audio playback on it's battery I guess!

28 points by stilist 16y ago

drivebyacct2 16y ago

It's not a feature, it's a workaround for a limited multitasking model.

rtrunck 16y ago
I agree. They labeled it an elegant solution. More appropriately, I believe, it is an elegant hack.
veeti 16y ago
As someone who's developed a similar app for Android, I'm actually a bit surprised that they have to resort to such workarounds in the first place.
mustpax 16y ago
On top of that, it's liable to be rejected by Apple as an abuse of public APIs. Just last week there was an article on HN about a guy who got rejected for using the VoIP background API for an IRC app. Which actually is bending the rules a lot less than playing a silent audio file on loop in order to claim to be an audio client.
- hboon 16y ago
  They were already rejected for playing a silent audio file. But this post mentions they have re-submitted the app, allowing users to play their own audio files. So this is 100% legitimate.

mortenjorck 16y ago

I'm a happy Pastebot customer and use it all the time, but I don't think I'll be using this feature. It's ingenious, but it just feels like the kind of hack I associate with less UX-focused platforms. I'm actually kind of glad the silent version wasn't approved, though. As logically strange as having to play music while using clipboard sync is, having another music app interrupt that sync is almost worse. I'd rather Tapbots had gone the Task Completion API route, where they can run whatever they want in the background for ten minutes (what the Colloquy IRC client uses). That kind of functionality has an intuitive, physical analog in timed light switches; one can't say as much for a light switch that requires the stereo to be playing. Apple really needs to increase that time limit, though.

jra101 16y ago
They've said (in the comments section of their post) that this will not get interrupted by other music apps. They tested with iTunes and Pandora running.
Skroob 16y ago
Task completion is unreliable for background processes. It's meant for finishing something quickly before an app goes into an inactive state. The OS is likely to kill the app at any time if it's taking too long or other apps need the resources. Unfortunately there just isn't a nice way for Pastebot to do what they want to do. It's one of those edge cases where none of the available options for multitasking are useful. They're doing the best they can, but this is still a really hacky solution and I wouldn't depend on it staying in the App Store.
- ugh 16y ago
  I think Apple doesn’t have to be quite as restrictive. They could allow developers to do some general purpose multitasking and take steps limit its use. They might only allow general purpose multitasking if it’s off by default and the user has to explicitly opt-in. They might add something in their settings app where you can turn turn general purpose multitasking on and off for each individual app which uses it. They might reject all apps which use general purpose multitasking when the dedicated methods would do, too. They might reject all apps which use general purpose multitasking without providing any functionality to the user. They might require all apps which use this general purpose multitasking to have some gracious failure mode if memory really gets low and the app has to be quit. (I’m not so sure about this last one. You would have to notify the user because otherwise the experience would be terrible, i.e. suddenly and without any apparent reason or warning Pastebot would stop to work. But adding a modal dialog would also lead to a terrible experience, they would have to make it more subtle which in turn can be easily overlooked. How does Android handle this?)
  - Skroob 16y ago
    There's a lot of ways they could go, definitely. But they're trying to keep it as simple as they can, from the user's perspective anyway. The best feature of the three multitasking styles they allow is that I don't have to think about it, which can't be said about the Pastebot solution, nor really any of your options either.

jrockway 16y ago

Release for Android instead? The iPhone is dying.

code_duck 16y ago
Ha! I'm no iPhone fanboy but increased competition->(slower growth,market share)!=dying. They just sold like 18,000,000,000 of these things in a month, did they not?

Synaesthesia 16y ago

So just to get this straight. You have to have music playing from Pastebot in the background for it to remain active? (even if it's a silent song) If you stop the music, does iOS freeze the app? Well luckily the iPhone has a very long audio playback on it's battery I guess!