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Steve Jobs email addressed this in an email: http://macdailynews.com/2010/06/29/steve_jobs_on_ios_multitasking_just_use_it_as_designed_and_youll_be_happy/ http:

by arn 15y ago

Steve Jobs email addressed this in an email: http://macdailynews.com/2010/06/29/steve_jobs_on_ios_multitasking_just_use_it_as_designed_and_youll_be_happy/ http://macdailynews.com/2010/06/29/steve_jobs_on_ios_multita... “People shouldn’t have to understand multitasking. Just use is [sic] as designed, and you’ll be happy. No need to ever quit apps.” – Steve Jobs’ email, June 29, 2010 another email too: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=955236 http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=955236 regarding quitting apps to save battery life: "You don't need to do that to save battery life. Trust the iPhone."

glhaynes 15y ago
Which makes it all the more infuriating that Geniuses are telling people to clear that stuff out. A directive needs to come from on high to stop that.
- danellis 15y ago
  Indeed. I took my iPad in because it kept losing its wifi connection. The "genius" looked at all that apps along the bottom and declared that they were using so much memory that the OS was forgetting the wifi password.
  - chc 15y ago
    That's just weird. There's no supported way to tell what apps are actually in memory. The list in the bottom when you double-click the home button just shows all recently used apps, even if they've been purged.
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    Steve would have wept if he could have seen that happen.
- ghshephard 15y ago
  Well, infuriating except for the fact that it works in a number of scenarios with very little risk. My advice would probably be simpler, "Just reboot your iPhone. "
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    I agree with "reboot your phone if you're having repeated troubles" but not with telling people to clear out the list — sure, there's very little risk of harm to the device, but because people (including authoritative ones) are telling people they need to clear the task switcher out, how many hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people are spending minutes every day clearing the list out? Not to mention the extra mental "weightiness" to all those people of having one more thing in their lives that's constantly filling with cruft and needing to be emptied?
MBCook 15y ago
And he's right. I can take my parent's iPhone or iPad and the recently open app list is 5-10 screens, yet the device still works perfectly. My mother doesn't have to know to quit things, the OS just does the right thing. That said, there are a few cases where closing all the background apps makes a difference with a game. Some games (I've seen it on Worms: Armageddon, Angry Birds, and a few others) can lose their fluidity, I think the problem is memory allocations. Closing all recently used apps (thus forcing any that are suspended into the not running state) can fix this. This was much worse on my 3G. The problem is very rare on my iPhone 4. But for normal users, it's perfectly possible to use the phone for months and never need to close a single app manually.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > This was much worse on my 3G. Which is why Apple did not enable it on the 3G in the first place. (did you jailbreak it, or are you talking about the 3GS?)
  - Macha 15y ago
    Apple default apps. At least when I had my iPod Touch 2G, some apps simply needed a device restart or they would not perform well at all. Simcity for example, was the one I always noticed.
    - MrFoof 15y ago
      To be fair, there's actually a large number of reports of crashes and freezes in the App Store. I wouldn't consider SimCity Deluxe for iOS to be a model citizen in terms of application stability. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simcity-deluxe/id380017992?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simcity-deluxe/id380017992?mt... If I trawl through all my logs in Xcode, the number of app crashes I've seen with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S from third-party apps can be counted using just the fingers on my hands. I think there was once an application that proved to be a bit unstable, and it ended up replaced by an alternative pretty quickly.
  - MBCook 15y ago
r00fus 15y ago
It would be nice to have some on-screen indicator that the app is capable of burning battery though. I wouldn't mind knowing, for example, to force-quit the Skype completely before leaving on holidays so I can have more battery life on the plane. Just a small badge would be nice.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  There are some indications - if something is getting location data in the background your location icon stays on in the top bar. There's definitely no indication for "chewing up all your data in the background" though, but thus far I've personally found no need for it. An app that's chewing up data in the background is usually fairly obvious - Skype, Pandora, etc.

by arn 15y ago

glhaynes 15y ago

Which makes it all the more infuriating that Geniuses are telling people to clear that stuff out. A directive needs to come from on high to stop that.

danellis 15y ago
Indeed. I took my iPad in because it kept losing its wifi connection. The "genius" looked at all that apps along the bottom and declared that they were using so much memory that the OS was forgetting the wifi password.
- chc 15y ago
  That's just weird. There's no supported way to tell what apps are actually in memory. The list in the bottom when you double-click the home button just shows all recently used apps, even if they've been purged.
- glhaynes 15y ago
  Steve would have wept if he could have seen that happen.
ghshephard 15y ago
Well, infuriating except for the fact that it works in a number of scenarios with very little risk. My advice would probably be simpler, "Just reboot your iPhone. "
- glhaynes 15y ago
  I agree with "reboot your phone if you're having repeated troubles" but not with telling people to clear out the list — sure, there's very little risk of harm to the device, but because people (including authoritative ones) are telling people they need to clear the task switcher out, how many hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people are spending minutes every day clearing the list out? Not to mention the extra mental "weightiness" to all those people of having one more thing in their lives that's constantly filling with cruft and needing to be emptied?

MBCook 15y ago

And he's right. I can take my parent's iPhone or iPad and the recently open app list is 5-10 screens, yet the device still works perfectly. My mother doesn't have to know to quit things, the OS just does the right thing. That said, there are a few cases where closing all the background apps makes a difference with a game. Some games (I've seen it on Worms: Armageddon, Angry Birds, and a few others) can lose their fluidity, I think the problem is memory allocations. Closing all recently used apps (thus forcing any that are suspended into the not running state) can fix this. This was much worse on my 3G. The problem is very rare on my iPhone 4. But for normal users, it's perfectly possible to use the phone for months and never need to close a single app manually.

masklinn 15y ago
> This was much worse on my 3G. Which is why Apple did not enable it on the 3G in the first place. (did you jailbreak it, or are you talking about the 3GS?)
- Macha 15y ago
  Apple default apps. At least when I had my iPod Touch 2G, some apps simply needed a device restart or they would not perform well at all. Simcity for example, was the one I always noticed.
  - MrFoof 15y ago
    To be fair, there's actually a large number of reports of crashes and freezes in the App Store. I wouldn't consider SimCity Deluxe for iOS to be a model citizen in terms of application stability. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simcity-deluxe/id380017992?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simcity-deluxe/id380017992?mt... If I trawl through all my logs in Xcode, the number of app crashes I've seen with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S from third-party apps can be counted using just the fingers on my hands. I think there was once an application that proved to be a bit unstable, and it ended up replaced by an alternative pretty quickly.
- MBCook 15y ago

r00fus 15y ago

It would be nice to have some on-screen indicator that the app is capable of burning battery though. I wouldn't mind knowing, for example, to force-quit the Skype completely before leaving on holidays so I can have more battery life on the plane. Just a small badge would be nice.

potatolicious 15y ago
There are some indications - if something is getting location data in the background your location icon stays on in the top bar. There's definitely no indication for "chewing up all your data in the background" though, but thus far I've personally found no need for it. An app that's chewing up data in the background is usually fairly obvious - Skype, Pandora, etc.