Blackberry multitasking
in [UK Mac]
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From: zoara on 30 Jun 2010 19:21 I was talking to a friend about the technical details of Apple's "multitasking", including how it paused the application's run loop and saved the state to store when switching away in order to conserve battery life. He replied that his Blackberry already did that. Some applications (like GPS) continued to run in the background, like on iOS4, but most would "freeze" and use no CPU. I can't find any confirmation or refutation of this - everything I find is very light on technical details, boiling down to "Multitasking? Pah, my Balckberry got there years ago!" I'm interested in whether the technique is just another example of Apple implying they invented something which has been around for ages. I'm fairly sure Android got that feature very recently (Froyo?) but I'm more interested in whether Blackberry does it. Anyone know? -z- -- "And the tiny universe compiles." http://powazek.com/posts/1655
From: SteveH on 1 Jul 2010 13:36 zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > I was talking to a friend about the technical details of Apple's > "multitasking", including how it paused the application's run loop and > saved the state to store when switching away in order to conserve > battery life. > > He replied that his Blackberry already did that. Some applications (like > GPS) continued to run in the background, like on iOS4, but most would > "freeze" and use no CPU. > > I can't find any confirmation or refutation of this - everything I find > is very light on technical details, boiling down to "Multitasking? Pah, > my Balckberry got there years ago!" > > I'm interested in whether the technique is just another example of Apple > implying they invented something which has been around for ages. I'm > fairly sure Android got that feature very recently (Froyo?) but I'm more > interested in whether Blackberry does it. > > Anyone know? No idea, but most applications aren't really 'multitasking', it's more 'task switching'. -- SteveH
From: Richard Tobin on 1 Jul 2010 14:27 In article <1jkyrnw.1lmu35jo1g1ldN%italiancar(a)gmail.com>, SteveH <italiancar(a)gmail.com> wrote: >No idea, but most applications aren't really 'multitasking', it's more >'task switching'. What do you mean by that? "Multitasking" is an attribute of the operating system, not an application. Do you just mean that most applications don't do anything when they're not in control of the display? -- Richard
From: SteveH on 1 Jul 2010 14:39 Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > In article <1jkyrnw.1lmu35jo1g1ldN%italiancar(a)gmail.com>, > SteveH <italiancar(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >No idea, but most applications aren't really 'multitasking', it's more > >'task switching'. > > What do you mean by that? "Multitasking" is an attribute of the > operating system, not an application. Do you just mean that most > applications don't do anything when they're not in control of the > display? Yeah, just that. They're suspended until you re-activate them. Even old 8-bit computers could do that. -- SteveH
From: Richard Tobin on 1 Jul 2010 15:04
In article <1jkyukk.1q5445c1l3pbcjN%italiancar(a)gmail.com>, SteveH <italiancar(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Even old 8-bit computers could do that. Multitasking is much older than 8-bit computers! -- Richard |