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I think what this really points to is the need for a background content-fetching API in iOS. Battery life spent loading is battery life spent loading whether th

I think what this really points to is the need for a background content-fetching API in iOS. Battery life spent loading is battery life spent loading whether the user is there or not; the key is to integrate it into the push framework so that battery life isn't wasted on polling. I'm really hoping this is part of iOS 5.

wdewind 16y ago
Seems pretty unlikely, though would be awesome. One of the major problems Jobs has insisted on abstracting away from the consumer is battery management. Time spent loading is time spent loading, but Jobs wont stand for customers being confused between their battery being broken and just having a lot of background content downloading without them noticing.
brianpan 16y ago
Exactly the opposite. The content should be fetch as-needed. Background fetching would get all the content whether or not it's ever read. If all the apps I've grown tired of are still fetching data in the background, that IS more battery life. Or if I only read one section of the Daily when it's downloaded it all. Having background fetching available would just let the Daily off the hook for designing the app the way it should! Other news apps have solved the problem. Safari can retrieve the entire internet without background fetching. Surely the Daily's problem is easier than Safari's.
lambda 16y ago
The problem with background content loading is that you never know if it's content the user is ever going to look at. It would be pretty easy to install a few apps to try out that you never wind up looking at again, and then your device spends a lot of time and battery loading the content overnight, and you wonder why your battery is dying even though you're not using it much.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  There's a simple solution to this: Restrict push-downloads to one unread at a time. If the user hasn't relaunched the app since the last download, nothing else comes through until they do.

wdewind 16y ago

Seems pretty unlikely, though would be awesome. One of the major problems Jobs has insisted on abstracting away from the consumer is battery management. Time spent loading is time spent loading, but Jobs wont stand for customers being confused between their battery being broken and just having a lot of background content downloading without them noticing.

brianpan 16y ago

Exactly the opposite. The content should be fetch as-needed. Background fetching would get all the content whether or not it's ever read. If all the apps I've grown tired of are still fetching data in the background, that IS more battery life. Or if I only read one section of the Daily when it's downloaded it all. Having background fetching available would just let the Daily off the hook for designing the app the way it should! Other news apps have solved the problem. Safari can retrieve the entire internet without background fetching. Surely the Daily's problem is easier than Safari's.

lambda 16y ago

The problem with background content loading is that you never know if it's content the user is ever going to look at. It would be pretty easy to install a few apps to try out that you never wind up looking at again, and then your device spends a lot of time and battery loading the content overnight, and you wonder why your battery is dying even though you're not using it much.

mortenjorck 16y ago
There's a simple solution to this: Restrict push-downloads to one unread at a time. If the user hasn't relaunched the app since the last download, nothing else comes through until they do.