Comments on Why does everything suck?: iPhone Background Processing: Not Fixed But Halfwa...

And if you wanted to... - record a call ? - apply ...

2009-07-02T18:53:59.516-04:00

And if you wanted to...
- record a call ?
- apply an effet to your voice when calling someone ?
- have a "waiting song" when having a call ?

All of these cases would require background processes.

I'm an iphone developer, i think Apple Developer tools are just Awesome. No one has to blame their work, they do what they want to do with their products. We can just bring ideas, but i believe they already thought about all of these.

Quentin.

Adams and Not Adams. Phew, That was refreshing. I...

2009-06-13T13:06:29.122-04:00

Adams and Not Adams.

Phew, That was refreshing. I landed on this page looking for something else but I never knew I will get to read so nice about what one person thinks about another.

I am very thankful to God Almighty not to have developed the universe the way Mr. Jobs want. Not that Mr. Jobs does not develop beautiful things. Imagine first time you are about to kiss something very special and realize you forgot to turn on the server (which will send push notifications on how long the kiss will be).... hee hee hee. That funny.

Apple SDK sucks.... But I need bucks... That sums up everyting

To me this is a huge drawback. I'm very used to ha...

2009-03-21T18:39:00.000-04:00

To me this is a huge drawback. I'm very used to having IM and SSH running on the background on my s60 Nokia. Just got an iPhone and while it's otherwise a solid product, I'm actually considering a switch back to s60. That "bkg network push" is a joke, Apple should just do the right thing and allow developers decent access to real background processing. As it stands, people are forced to hack their phones even if they're on official (AT&T etc) carriers.

I'm using Nokia E71 that has background process fe...

2009-03-20T19:24:00.000-04:00

I'm using Nokia E71 that has background process feature exposed through J2ME. I could sync my calendar in the background. Pulling emails into my phone through background process. I also wrote an IM that does not rely on notification. It simply continue to run on the background if user choose to through settings of my IM program. My battery last for more than a day with reasonable usage. I now take on iphone development project. I certainly would appreciate background. I should say this feature is on the top of my wish list if Apple is listening.

I agree with anon 23Jan 1:42PM. Location-triggere...

2009-03-19T06:06:00.000-04:00

I agree with anon 23Jan 1:42PM. Location-triggered alerts are HUGE - that's the first app I thought I was going to be able to develop before I learned of Apple's lame-o position on background tasks.

Another app that would be great is time-tracking app that's implemented by timer(s) running in the background, but currently that's impossible.

Still nothing and here we are March of 09. Apple y...

2009-03-06T17:49:00.000-05:00

Still nothing and here we are March of 09. Apple you never cease to amaze me. How can you promise something and then make it disappear as though it never happened. If Microsoft had promised anything and been this late it would have been a big deal, but somehow its as if nothing happened. I will end with. FU apple

Totally agree with Hank on this one. Apple has com...

2009-01-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

Totally agree with Hank on this one. Apple has complete control over the iphone OS, there's no reason they can't implement a simple process priority scheme where all "default apps" phone/music etc live in the high priority region and all 3rd party apps share lower priority slots in a timeshared fashion. This is multitasking OS 101 and already supported within linux pthreads.
Not allowing constantly on 3rd party BG apps is a serious flaw in iPhone architecture.
Relying on server notifications is a ridiculous suggestion as a viable alternative.
Here's an app/feature I want... RemindMeAt which pops up reminders/todos not based solely on time but based on location as well. For example I'd like to be able to set a reminder to say, Remind me when I get home to do ABC. or Next time in Costco remind me to check the availability/price of that new Hoover Model. With BG app that periodically checks location this type of feature would be simple to implement. Android and Palm Pre both support 3rd pary BG apps, I'd be interested to see how well they implemented such support.

We just bought an iPhone. We are using WiFi when a...

2009-01-02T04:46:00.000-05:00

We just bought an iPhone. We are using WiFi when at home. But when we leave the house, the WiFi stays on: you tend to forget switching it on/off whenever you're leaving or entering the house.

Since WiFi consumes power, i would like the iPhone to know the location of my WiFi Access Point, and whenever i get x meters away, switch off WiFi on the iPhone.

I 1st thought this functionality needs a background process, but it would also be solved when WiFi, when losing signal, would check if it was out of the AP-area (because we left the house), and switch off when it was (this would not need a separate background-process).

Does someone know how to get this 'wish' to Apple-developers? As i conclude this won't be functionality you can develop on your own since Apple forbids it?

Raoul Teeuwen

1 PETER 4:16-1916 Yet if any man suffer as a Chri...

2008-12-13T05:59:00.000-05:00

1 PETER 4:16-19
16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

THE WAY I LOOK AT THESE VERSES I SEE THAT IF THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BARELY SAVED THEN WHAT HOPE DOES THOSE WHO ARE NOT SAVED HAVE. I'M NOT SAYING WE ARE SAVED BY WORKS I'M JUST SAYING WE NEED TO GET READY AND WE NEED TO MAKE SURE OTHERS ARE READY. EPHESIANS 2:8-10 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
PHILIPPIANS 4:4-8
4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
MATTHEW 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

{I PRAY YOU ALL THE FAVOR AND PEACE OF GOD AND JESUS AND THE ANOINTING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN YOUR LIFE.} I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A HAPPY SABBATH FRIDAY SUNSET TO SATURDAY SUNSET I LOVE YOU ALL GOD BLESS YOU ALL HAVE A GOOD DAY AND HAVE A GOOD NIGHT. I APPRECIATE ALL OF YOU SO MUCH. HUGSSSSSSS & KISSESSSSSSS. IF YOU THINK I'M FORCING MY BELIEFS ON YOU I'M SORRY JESUS IS COMING SOON! WILL YOU BE READY? DON'T BE DECEIVED BEFORE JESUS COMES the antichrist WILL COME.PLEASE READ 2 THESSALONIANS 2:8-17. I PRAY YOU ARE READY.IF YOU ARE NOT ASHAMED PLEASE FORWARD THIS IT IS IMPORTANT WE TRY TO MAKE SURE OTHERS ARE READY. {MARK 8:38 "Whosoever therefore shall be ASHAMED of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ASHAMED, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." }LOVE IS THE REASON WE LIVE, LOVE NEVER ENDS, AND LOVE NEVER FAILS, FOR {GOD IS LOVE 1 JOHN 4:8} STAY STRONG IN THE LORD AND DON'T LET NOTHING AND NO ONE DETER YOU FROM GOD ALMIGHTY. LOVE ALWAYS BECAUSE GOD LOVES YOU AND AS CHRISTIANS WE SHOULD LOVE EACH OTHER. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17 PRAY WITHOUT CEASING. PLEASE READ MATTHEW 24, REVELATION, PSALM 27 AND DANIEL. MAY GOD BLESS AND KEEP YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. BYE
*~*REPENT: FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.*~*

EVERYTHING DOESN'T SUCK. THE REASON I CAN SAY THIS...

2008-12-13T05:57:00.000-05:00

EVERYTHING DOESN'T SUCK. THE REASON I CAN SAY THIS IS BECAUSE EVEN WHEN THINGS ARE BAD THEY CAN ACTUALLY WORK OUT FOR YOUR GOOD IF YOU LOVE GOD. ROMANS 8:28-39 28 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
29 "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."
30 "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified."
31 "What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?"
32 "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
34 "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."
35 "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"
36 "As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
37 "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."
38 "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,"
39 "Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Defend Apple all you want, but their controlling b...

2008-12-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

Defend Apple all you want, but their controlling behavior is just plain stupid. Yeah, you can come up with slick arguments on why they are allowed to do background processing, calendar alerts, etc - and all the 3rd party developers are not. But, in the end, it just plain cripples 3rd party developers and forces their apps to suck. I don't care about your apologist arguments, Apple fanboys, all I care about is a product that does what I want, and the iPhone is not it. The only reason I get passionate is because I WISH the iPhone was that product. It is slick, and many things are well thought out... but because of issues like this, I am left with products that do what I want, but with much less polish. Frustrating, to say the least.

let the user decide if they want an app with backg...

2008-09-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

let the user decide if they want an app with background processes, not Apple.

well i have read all the comments, and i am a deve...

2008-08-18T17:33:00.000-04:00

well i have read all the comments, and i am a developer working on the sdk and i think that background processing is the only brick wall on this platform.

its forcing the development of short term, singular task based apps, and leaving large scale innovation out in the cold.

this is an amazing device, with incredible potential. honestly speaking, i don't know one developer who doesn't always have performance in mind. it would, after all, be in the devs best interest to create an app that is light weight *and* effective. i say leave it up to the developers. we're not going to knowingly create an app that becomes a resource hog. not to mention that apple can easily test the apps coming through their appstore. seriously, when you got the last say of what can and cant be installed on the device, what do you have to lose...

Having not read all the comments - let me say that...

2008-08-18T13:31:00.000-04:00

Having not read all the comments - let me say that it would be ridiculous to rely on the push service for alarms or notifications that are not based on external events (such as being notified of a todo or calendar item). Say I am in a plane or have no cell coverage, and a time critical todo item is coming due - because of my bad memory, I may forget (which is the reason I bought a PDA in the first place - to solve this issue of forgetting - an organizer never worked, because I would forget to look at it every day!). I really need the ability to have a todo app where I can say, "remind me on the 10th to get this done before the 12th". I refuse to purchase an iPhone, because the only way to accomplish that now is to use the calendar, which sucks, big time.
Defend Apple all you want, but their controlling behavior is just plain stupid. Yeah, you can come up with slick arguments on why they are allowed to do background processing, calendar alerts, etc - and all the 3rd party developers are not. But, in the end, it just plain cripples 3rd party developers and forces their apps to suck. I don't care about your apologist arguments, Apple fanboys, all I care about is a product that does what I want, and the iPhone is not it. The only reason I get passionate is because I WISH the iPhone was that product. It is slick, and many things are well thought out... but because of issues like this, I am left with products that do what I want, but with much less polish. Frustrating, to say the least.

You might well be interested to know that I have j...

2008-07-17T23:39:00.001-04:00

You might well be interested to know that I have just discovered that Apple have used an instant messaging protocol (Jabber/XMPP) for the MobileMe notifications, and will likely do the same thing for developers later in the year. See: http://samj.net/2008/07/apple-iphone-20-real-story-behind-push.html

You might well be interested to know that I have j...

2008-07-17T23:39:00.000-04:00

Better hope that your Hotel room has good network ...

2008-07-15T16:16:00.000-04:00

Better hope that your Hotel room has good network connectivity because you're alarm won't ring if there's no network coverage to send that push message from Apple's servers. What otherwise is a simple use-case that is completely local to a device turns into something that will also require a server infrastructure to support. I have no problems with having the user prompted before allowing an app to run in the background, but it's naive to believe that it's OK for Apple to create background applications and services and selling the importance of those (such as Enterprise Push E-mail) without providing the mechanisms to allow 3rd parties to do the same. Mr. Williams is dead-on accurate. Apple's in the process of allowing 1/3 of the use-cases for background services. Hopefully a year from now, Apple will be on the road to supporting all three use-cases.

My main problem with this is the fact that this ha...

2008-07-14T02:13:00.000-04:00

My main problem with this is the fact that this has pretty big security implications. If you want (for instance) an IM client you'll have to give out your usernames/passwords to the developers of that app because it's their servers that need to maintain connections to a Jabber server, AIM, MSNM, etc. I really don't want to do that. I also really don't want all my instant messages to go through the server of some third party developer. It's already bad enough that those messages get routed through Microsoft/AOL.

It's ridiculous that people fail to grasp that, wh...

2008-07-07T16:57:00.000-04:00

It's ridiculous that people fail to grasp that, while possible to write an alarm clock by sending messages through a server, an alarm clock shouldn't have to be tied to any server at all!

Or an RSS reader that updates its feeds automatically every half hour (and don't say, "but the application developer's servers can send a notification to every user every 30 minutes to update their feeds")

Or a calendaring app.

Or the aforementioned location updater that could turn off your ringer automatically when you get to work or whatever.

Luckily, jailbreaking will continue until Apple pulls their head out (on this issue... the iPhone does rock, overall).

The very first application I was excited to develo...

2008-06-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

The very first application I was excited to develop when the iPhone SDK was announced is one which I believe would need to run in the background. A similar application was alluded to by Hank.

I want my iPhone to monitor my location and alert me when I am close to a point of interest. There are MANY reasons this would be useful and I don't see a way this can effectively be done without background processing. I would be fine to have my application sleep for 30 sec and then run a tiny bit of code to compare my location with points of interest and go back to sleep if none were near. This would limit the battery consumption, and I have no issue with strict limits on the energy used when in background mode. I would need very little.

One of my big issues with my WM 5 and 6 phones is that the only way to actually turn off applications is with 3rd party apps. When I’m done with a program and close it I want it to turn off not just go to the background. I understand that poorly done background applications can cause issues but there has to be a happy medium.

I believe the only reason for the missing functionality is that Apple wishes to have an edge available only to their, and their partners’, products.

Interesting points, though I don't know if backgro...

2008-06-22T04:45:00.000-04:00

Interesting points, though I don't know if background processes are the answer. We need to find a way to enable these types of things without enabling viruses as well.

BTW, it is possible to build an alarm clock using the current system. When the user sets an alarm, you send a message off to your server... which then pushes a notification at the appropriate time.

You are correct that it is not possible to have it broadcast my current location at all times... though I don't know if that is something I would want. Matter of personal preference... though I would want to be notified if an app was doing that so I could remove it.

talking about background application, I am afraid ...

2008-06-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

talking about background application, I am afraid Apple doesn't tell what they should tell, i.e. the root of problems is not in power efficiency - it is somewhere else... I can speculate a lot, whether it is evil Steve's mind (to push everything on their servers and milk stupid Apple funs as dog tears newspaper) or just not so great as their were painted Apple engineers...

The fact is that during course of development in Nokia tablets, it has been learned that on ARM-based platform (and yes, Steve runs almost same HW) CPU and processes does not constitute main power hog - main evil is in screen (not even screen but amount of light necessary to make it minimally visible) and radio (bluetooth, wifi, phone engine in case of iphone), and Linux as platform is full of bg processes, so... Yes, Apple just uses background processes *prohibition* as lame excuse for something else, what they don't want to say. No wander, Apple fun will eat whatever is fed from Steve's hands ;) Don't be morons, don't take Steve's words for granted.

I just got out of the WWDC08 and there appears to ...

2008-06-17T12:20:00.000-04:00

I just got out of the WWDC08 and there appears to be no one realizing the value of background process. Lots of fear that something will go wrong.

At any rate, Apple must get this background registration fixed so we can give end-users what they need for a connected social network.

mrb

>"Except you're not even an iPhone programmer.""An...

2008-06-14T19:48:00.000-04:00

>"Except you're not even an iPhone programmer."

"And that is relevant to whether the iPhone needs background processing how?"

You haven't even downloaded the SDK, but you're demanding that Apple rearchitect the SDK to make it easier for you to write apps that you aren't even working on, and you can't understand how that is relevant?

You throw a shitfit about how big bad Apple is "prohibiting" you from creating innovative mobile applications, but in reality it isn't Apple that's stopping you from writing iPhone apps. It's Hank Williams.

If you looked at the SDK and read the documentation instead of throwing feces, you would have some idea how the software works. You could offer informed opinions instead of calling anyone who disagrees with you names.

Your "fairly popular article" proposed architectures that wouldn't work even if you had background processes. You would know that if you took the time to read the docs instead of throwing feces.

The title of your blog says it all. Not "everything sucks," Hank. What sucks is your attitude.

"more "paradigm shifting" than Yet Another Instant...

2008-06-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

"more "paradigm shifting" than Yet Another Instant Messaging client, but of course you disagree."

Who said anything about an instant messaging client being paradigm shifting?

"In your view it seems that "everything sucks" and nothing is paradigm shifting except the program you want to write."

I guess you haven't read much here, including my coverage of the iPhone.

"Except you're not even an iPhone programmer."

And that is relevant to whether the iPhone needs background processing how?

"So, everyone developing for the iPhone is a "fanboy" and the only person whose opinions count is the guy who hasn't even looked at the SDK?"

Nope. I havent said anything about "everyone developing for the iPhone". I have just said *you* are a fanboy, and not a very effective one at that. And I am not sure where in this blog it talks about whose opinion does or does not count. And even if I did, I am not sure why you would care. It sounds like you have some serious persecution complex going on here dude. I think you should seek professional help.