John Gruber on the iPhone Multitasking Argument
John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes, “Williams does have a good point regarding AOL’s demo of a native iPhone AIM client during the SDK introductory event: an IM client is exactly the sort of app that’s potentially a lot more useful if it continues to keep you logged in even when the app isn’t frontmost.”
True, but there’s ways to get around this on the server-side. For instance, the AIM client could continue to show you as logged in, and maintain your incoming IMs on the server-side until you check the AIM app again. No, it wouldn’t alert you to incoming messages unless you set up another way to do that (ex: Text messages?) but you would still be able to stay within the confines of the SDK and provide a decent user experience.
All the squawking about the lack of background functionality is driving me nuts. Apple gave us the pony we asked for. Now all of us nerds (most of whom don’t know anything about programming for small battery-powered devices) are bitching that the pony only has four legs! I’m just glad the blogging community isn’t fark or /b/. Then we’d be demanding centaurs.
