Quote:
Originally Posted by harakiri
a dual core processor is only useful when
- you have software that supports two cores
- you have an OS with true multitasking
Number one will come at some time. Right now its a non issue.
Number two is probably not the case until Apple really changes its OS. I guess iOS 5 could do this.
As for Safari, the forthcoming iOS 4.3 will change some parts in Safari and its supposed to run faster because of this. Apparently all devices running 4.3 will benefit
I am looking forward to iOS 4.3 for my iPad 1 next week  |
iOS has had full multitasking support since the beginning... at least under the hood. The issue Apple has is balancing the battery life, RAM, and processor use on a rather limited set of hardware. If you have any experience using a Symbian or Windows Mobile device before the iPhone came out, you may remember how much of a pain it could be to track down what application was running in the background and draining your battery in 3 hours.
As devices get more powerful you can see the trend of Apple opening more and more of that multitasking support the OS has to the user. Right at this moment, the support for limited multitasking in iOS is completely an artificial restriction based on managing the standby battery life (which I'm grateful for after being a windows mobile user), and the lack of a really good UI for managing multiple running tasks (which I'm sure SOMEONE at Apple is working on... and may or may not take cues from Android).
I don't doubt that someday the iPhone's multitasking will be more available to the user though, but I'm also grateful of the fact that apps are forced to relaunch every time... it does put a lot of pressure on the devs to make iPhone apps as responsive as possible, and when we do get real multitasking, that will hopefully carry over into that feature as well.