JP
Now they’ve moved on to discussing one of the most-requested features from developers is a way to track whether or not someone is using an application. Apple notes that one of the solutions is to allow for backgroud processes. While that would seem appealing (Windows Mobile has been doing this), it is actually terrible for your battery life. Don’t worry though, Apple does have a solution.
Apple has created a push notification service which will be distributed to all developers. Essentially the iPhone will keep a steady connection to the Apple servers. When you quit an application, updates are shuffled from the server to your iPhone.
We won’t be seeing this functionality until September, however, developers should be getting their hands on this very soon.
One Response to “WWDC 2008 – Apple talks background application support for the iPhone”
Dave June 10, 2008
This is dumb. How about giving us some guidelines for memory/processor usage when backgrounding apps and let the customer decide if the battery hit is worth it?
A mechanism like this requires the app provider to run a server and push events to every iphone – including those that don’t need to update. What about an RSS reader that is to pull updates every 30 minutes? Is Apple suggesting that we push an event to the iphone that just tells the app to update? What if your app has more than just a few users?
It just seems so silly… Apple, just let us run background apps and be the ones responsible to our customers.
+2