chip cullen graphics freelancer

The current criticisms of the iPhone (and now iPad) OS all start with the same item: multitasking. The lack of multitasking is apparently making these devices useless to a lot of technocrati.

Really?

It’s funny how cyclical all of this is. The rumor mill leading up to the iPad was a perfect echo of the buzz that preceded the iPhone. And the initial reaction has been just as articulate (“No unicorns? FAiL!1!”).

The OS criticisms are following a pattern as well. The lament du jour, the lack of multitasking, sounds like another complaint of the past – the whole copy & paste fiasco.

For years (or so it seemed), every pundit was kvetching about how the iPhone didn’t have copy & paste. I too, bemoaned it’s omission. Then a funny thing happened.

We got copy & paste.

I suspect my reaction was shared by a lot of people: “Yay! Finally! That’s neat – it works great. Neato. Woo hoo.” Then I proceeded to use it four times since.

Apple probably thinks the same thing will happen with multitasking and third party apps. Remember – multitasking does exist, but only with certain Apple native apps – like listening to your iPod music while doing almost anything else.

Will multitasking be useful in the iPhone or iPad form factor? I think its practicality will be limited. That much is evident in that most pundits all tend to use the same example – “What if I want to use Pandora and ___ “. They all use this example because the easiest multitasking scenario to grasp is listening to music while you do something else. Which you can already do, you just have to do it Apple’s way. I’m not knocking Pandora – it’s a great service and a great App – but not enough to rewrite an OS over.

I buy Apple’s argument that they haven’t been able to get multitasking to work without battery life loss. When they looked at their options – they went with maintaining good functionality and living with the absence of more.

Is it an omission, and do I hope to see it addressed? Absolutely. I just don’t think it’s as big of a deal as people make it out to be.