Restarting technology to get it going again – a fact of life?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Sunday, 23 March 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! A recent online article advises users to turn off their iPod Touch and iPhone in case of problems, and this is true of many, but not all technologies. Is truly restart-free technology just an impossible dream? A recent article at Blorge.com explores the benefits of turning off your iPod Touch and iPhone for ‘optimum performance’. The article explains that some iPod Touch users have discovered that when playing long playlists or music on the ‘shuffle’ setting, the iPod Touch can sometimes ‘crash’, with the user thrown back to the main home screen. The article also theorises that perhaps iPod Touch software stays resident in the background, rather than being completely shut down, which is what might cause the iPod Touch (and by definition, the iPhone), from sometimes acting strangely. Given that the iPod software (for music, videos, audiobooks etc) within the iPod Touch is made by Apple, a company that doesn’t have to follow the restrictions it has placed in its SDK for third party developers, it should come as no surprise that the iPod software does not have to completely shut down if it doesn’t want to when you go to a different application on the iPod Touch or iPhone. One would actually expect that the iPod software does indeed close down, like most other iPod Touch/iPhone apps, when you exit the software to go elsewhere on the device, but playing music in the background while surfing Safari or doing something else is a clear example of when the iPod Touch and iPhone can run more than one program at a time. Apple have mandated that all other third party software must switch itself off, saving information where necessary, when going to a different program through pressing the main button under the screen. Then, when that program is restarted, it should come back to where it left off, unless it is specifically designed to start again from the beginning. This rule was put in place for the SDK so that the iPhone and iPod Touch could make better use of the internal battery, processor speed and memory. Although both devices run OS X, they do so with far fewer resources than a regular PC. Were Apple to allow users to run as many concurrent programs as they wanted, it would have a serious effect of battery life, device/processing speed and responsiveness, and the amount of memory left to run the OS. So, until we get faster, more powerful iPhones and iPod Touches, we’ll just have to live with the fact that the world’s most arguably advanced and sexy gadgets can’t, for the most part, walk and chew gum and the same time. So, what might be causing the need to restart your iPhone and iPod Touch (and other devices like the Nokia N95), and how can you minimise those restarts? Please read onto page 2 for plenty more. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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