Deconstructing the web
Contrary to the rumours, analyst “sources” and plain wishful thinking, I’m not convinced that iPhone OS 4.0 — to be unveiled later today — will provide support for across-the-board multitasking.
Sure multitasking is technically possible and in some cases, such as apps that stream media, highly desirable, but I am not sure that the hardware is up to it.
As John Gruber points out in his review of the iPad, Safari struggles to hold on to more than one page, given the relatively small, 256MB of RAM, and no capacity for virtual memory. The same is true of the iPhone and iPod touch, and even more so of early models.
Adding multitasking will simply increase demands on the available RAM, potentially making it slower to switch apps than it is with the current quit-and-open model. It’s certainly a problem faced by other smartphone platforms, where apps are required to manage memory — something Apple would not countenance.
So I, for one, will be neither suprised nor disappointed if Apple leaves multitasking as-is — available to the core apps but not anywhere else.
