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From the article: "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously in the background without sacrificing battery life and foreground app performanc

by beloch 15y ago

From the article: "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously in the background without sacrificing battery life and foreground app performance. But that’s how Microsoft has positioned Metro for tablets — a modern touch interface that carries the full CPU and RAM consumption of Windows as we know it. That have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too attitude is what I didn’t get with Microsoft’s positioning Metro as its answer to the iPad." This is wrong. From Anandtech: (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4771/microsoft-build-windows-8-pre-beta-preview/7 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4771/microsoft-build-windows-8...) "discarded applications will continue to stay open as a background application, having all of their memory pages intact but unable to schedule CPU time so long as they’re a background application. They’ll remain in this state until the OS decides to evict them, at which point they need to be able to gracefully shut down and resume when the user re-launches the application. Internally Microsoft calls this freezing and rehydrating an application." Metro's approach sounds very similar to that of iOS and Android. Presumably this behavior will be adjustable so that background processes can be allowed on desktops without mobile power constraints. This is actually a really smart way to do things. Make how the OS handles background apps a setting rather than hard-coded architecture. e.g. If you're out and about using your tablet background apps get quashed so that you get decent battery life. When you go home and plug it into a dock you can leave a torrent downloading in the background while you browse the web or play games. Best of both worlds.

pbz 15y ago
Which proves he didn't even bother to watch the keynote. There was even a piece of hardware that showed the power consumption during sleep. They also showed the new task manager and specifically pointed out how the Metro apps have been suspended (using 0% CPU, but still loaded in RAM).
- silverlight 15y ago
  He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys. From the article: It’s worth noting that Metro is more than just a new look, and more than just putting touch first. Metro apps have similar restrictions to iOS apps. According to Jensen Harris, for example, Metro apps will get “about five seconds” after they’re no longer on-screen before the system puts them into a suspended state. There’s no file manager. Users no longer quit (or, in Windows parlance, exit) apps explicitly. These tradeoffs sound familiar? ...Did you (and the parent poster) simply read the Gruber article until you could find something to nitpick, then go with it?
  - pbz 15y ago
    "He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys." Which, again, proves he didn't watch the keynote. At one point they brought up the scenario of using a tablet on the couch and then, after finding a bug, being able to pull up Visual Studio on the same device. Even the tablet they gave out came with VS installed on the device.
    - lloeki 15y ago
      It's an Intel tablet. Gruber envisions a possible scenario where Metro-only is on ARM tablets.
      - pbz 15y ago
        That's a very narrow definition of a tablet. Regardless, they also showed at a different conference the actual Windows desktop with Office running on ARM. If it can run the full desktop it can Metro as well.
ugh 15y ago
Does that apply to everything including Office and all that stuff?
lloeki 15y ago
To me, "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously" is precisely the same as "discarded applications will continue to stay open [...] but unable to schedule CPU time" indeed. At no point the article says Metro would not have such a feature. The point is merely that you can't have outstanding energy management with runaway background processes, which is the way desktop apps work today, so having a full-blown desktop running legacy apps on a mobile experience is compromising power management. Side note regarding "you can leave a torrent downloading in the background": see task completion API on iOS, which fills the use case while eliminating undue battery use.

by beloch 15y ago

pbz 15y ago

Which proves he didn't even bother to watch the keynote. There was even a piece of hardware that showed the power consumption during sleep. They also showed the new task manager and specifically pointed out how the Metro apps have been suspended (using 0% CPU, but still loaded in RAM).

silverlight 15y ago
He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys. From the article: It’s worth noting that Metro is more than just a new look, and more than just putting touch first. Metro apps have similar restrictions to iOS apps. According to Jensen Harris, for example, Metro apps will get “about five seconds” after they’re no longer on-screen before the system puts them into a suspended state. There’s no file manager. Users no longer quit (or, in Windows parlance, exit) apps explicitly. These tradeoffs sound familiar? ...Did you (and the parent poster) simply read the Gruber article until you could find something to nitpick, then go with it?
- pbz 15y ago
  "He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys." Which, again, proves he didn't watch the keynote. At one point they brought up the scenario of using a tablet on the couch and then, after finding a bug, being able to pull up Visual Studio on the same device. Even the tablet they gave out came with VS installed on the device.
  - lloeki 15y ago
    It's an Intel tablet. Gruber envisions a possible scenario where Metro-only is on ARM tablets.
    - pbz 15y ago
      That's a very narrow definition of a tablet. Regardless, they also showed at a different conference the actual Windows desktop with Office running on ARM. If it can run the full desktop it can Metro as well.

ugh 15y ago

Does that apply to everything including Office and all that stuff?

lloeki 15y ago

To me, "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously" is precisely the same as "discarded applications will continue to stay open [...] but unable to schedule CPU time" indeed. At no point the article says Metro would not have such a feature. The point is merely that you can't have outstanding energy management with runaway background processes, which is the way desktop apps work today, so having a full-blown desktop running legacy apps on a mobile experience is compromising power management. Side note regarding "you can leave a torrent downloading in the background": see task completion API on iOS, which fills the use case while eliminating undue battery use.