| TomaTito said: Previous mobile OS, like Symbian or WM, have multi-tasked in a similar fashion to the PC market. And by multi-tasking you think of processes running simultaneously. I understand why the current method is used in mobile devices, but I would not call it multi-tasking just resuming. About the memory used, I think the recent list uses some memory for caching the icon images and names, just like iOS does this for its multiple screens. Tell us how your test goes, I'm sure it does use some memory, but is it negligible? |
Apps can and do run in the background (are executing code, using CPU cycles and memory) but few are coded to do so. It's just not efficient given the limited resources of modern tablets. Plus, the general idea of a tablet is not to ape the PC experience, nor design it around user upgraded hardware specifications. As wasteful as it sounds, tablets really are devices more or less designed to be chucked or replaced every 2-3 years; that's the user's hardware upgrade.
But back to iOS. The invisible to the user hierarchy goes from active app (running onscreen in foreground), inactive (device in sleep mode, app in foreground), background (still executing code, using CPU cycles and memory), suspended (in memory, not executing code) and finally, not running (not launched or terminated). Most apps running in background quickly transistion to suspended, barring those specifically coded to continue running in background. From what I can observe by terminating apps via the multitask "apps recenly opened" menu, effectively force quits any running app regardless of state. Suspended apps terminated in such a manner immediately free up memory as observed with a memory tracking utility. But the iOS memory manager automatically terminates apps, purging them from suspended as needed. Once memory resources approach capacity, iOS takes control in determining which apps to purge from memory. Apps returning to the "not running" state remain in the "recently opened" menu along with any background or suspended apps.
I'm sure there are enough users who would like to know the status of any recently opened apps in the menu to warrant indicator additions in later iOS iterations, but the reality is, none of that actually matters to 99% of all iOS users, and not because they're not "power users" but because iOS was engineered and designed to manage memory and CPU resources automatically.
