Though the announcement of Apple’s iPad has met with the typical mixture of hyperbolic praise and hyperbolic criticism (no one can talk sensibly about it), there has been one consistent complaint that most would agree is valid: a device this powerful should be capable of some form of multitasking. But I think I have the answer.
Too Many Apps Are Dependent on Each Other
Don’t get me wrong — it absolutely makes sense for the iPad to operate differently from a conventional computer. Making applications fullscreen exclusively is far more appropriate for a touch-driven than using resizable overlapping windows. But this single-task approach to computing has serious limitations. Consider Apple’s own Pages for iPad. Though they seem like programs that operate in pure isolation, they really don’t. As you write an article, you’ll often find the need to duck online to check facts, download new pictures, and then flip back to writing. The same is true of Keynote. Even the current iPhone is like this, which is why Twitter apps typically have web browsers built into them for reading links.
In addition to applications that have interdependencies (as any creativity application and Safari do), there are applications that simply don’t make sense to run solely by themselves. It’s with good reason that Apple allows the iPod application to run in the background of my iPhone — I’m virtually never going to actively use the app other than for selecting a song. Otherwise, it just plays my music while I either use another app or keep my phone in my pocket. It’s ludicrous that I can’t do likewise for Pandora or Last.fm. Similarly, there’s no reason that Skype should stop functioning when I hit the home button — Apple makes the ability to use your phone while making a call a distinct advantage of the iPhone.
At the same time, Apple is quite right that traditional multitasking on smartphones is a disaster. There’s no quicker way to demolish battery life and performance than to get four or five apps running at once on a Droid. So what’s the answer? Forget about applications, and get serious about providing system-level services.
Services Can Be Ubiquitous, Powerful and Lightweight
The answer for the iPad is neither full multitasking or no multitasking of any kind. The answer is to classify a certain kind of application as a Service that can be called upon from within any other app. Mac OS X does this to limited effect (seen above), NeXTStep did it better, but the gist is a contextual, useful function not contained within the primary application. Imagine that primary-use apps (think iWork-level) are designed with a button labeled “Services” that you can tap which brings up a pane listing all available programs and tasks that can be run in parallel with it. It would then instantiate that Service as a Widget on the side of the screen, up to two at a time. (You could imagine iPhone Safari and Pandora both at once, for example). To switch the list, you would then, hold down the home button to bring up close boxes at the upper-left corner.
Basically, it would allow single-tasking to feel like multi-tasking while being significantly more elegant than a conventional multi-tasking approach. I can’t think of a scenario in which I would need to have both the full-screen version of Pages and the full-screen version of the Calendar app open at the same time. I can think of dozens in which I would need full Pages and Widget-size Calendar.
What do you think? Would this meet most of your iPad multitasking needs?
