One of the repeated knocks against the iPad has been the lack of multitasking. You can run only one app at a time.
There are lots of good reasons to knock the iPad, starting with the no-women-in-the-Apple-hierarchy name. Is single-tasking one of them?
Multitasking is a computer’s ability to run multiple apps at the same time. In Windows or the Mac, you might be running a browser while working in Word, with EMail in the background too. On a SmartPhone, the most obvious manifestation is background checking for new mail while playing solitaire or making a call.
In addition, under the covers, the operating system — you know, the thing Google thinks we don’t need — is managing printers, the mouse on your computer or finger touches on a phone, and a bunch of other stuff that’s both seriously complex and not something most users need to think about anymore.
The reality is that many — I’d venture most — computer users don’t need overt multitasking. Indeed, it keeps many users from using a computer in the first place, because it’s “too complicated.” For those of us in an office or work environment, we can’t imagine living without it, but that’s not the iPad’s or even iPhone’s core market.
The iPad and iPhone keep it simple. Very simple. And for most potential purchasers, that’s a plus.
The Kindle is a single-purpose, single-tasking device. So is your toaster, home phone, microwave, and heating system. I don’t have a kitchen appliance that is a refrigerator one moment and an oven the next. Perhaps the closest item in a kitchen to a multitasker is a stove/oven that has a separate kitchen timer — and I can tell you, having an older version of such a beast at our island place north of here, neither my wife nor I, long-term technologists both, can operate it properly 100% of the time. (At least the one in our Seattle kitchen has totally separate buttons for the timer.)
I think Apple recognizes that the sweet spot in their market isn’t on-the-go-go-go technology mavens but ordinary people. Sure, lots of people with a technology bent are buying the iPhone because of its elegance or coolth or even the it’s-not-Microsoft-ness, but Apple would have Windows Mobile-like market penetration if it chased that audience as a primary target.
I’m not saying Apple won’t at some point develop multitasking for the iPhone and iPad. Rumors suggest that the operating system update expected later this year will include it, though rumors in AppleVille are just that, not the leaks that often dribble out of Redmond.
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The reality of multitasking is that it doesn’t really exist. It’s an illusion, whether the purported multitasker is a computer… or a human being.
We do a combination of background processing and context switching. In humans, there are three levels: the autonomic nervous system, which keeps us breathing and our blood circulating; a series of low-attention processes, such as walking or casual driving, where we don’t pay conscious attention to the mechanics of consciously learned actions unless something surprising or difficult comes up; and our foreground processing. (There’s also a bunch of subconscious thinking and so on, but this isn’t intended to be a piece on human neurology, where I am certainly no expert.)
As I’ve written before, we can normally foreground-process only one thing at a time. If we’re texting, we’re not actually listening. If we’re glancing at EMail, we’re losing focus on our main task.
In addition, context switching among these tasks is very costly. If you think you’re spending half your time on X and half your time on Y while switching between them more than every 20-40 minutes, you’re wrong. You’re spending perhaps a third of your time on X, a third on Y, and a third rebuilding your mental pictures after each switch.
We function best when we can give undivided foreground attention to a single task. Is that a tiger in the bushes? Stop whatever else you’re doing until you figure it out. Those who tried to keep up their conversational grunts — prehistoric texting — got eaten before their genes made a splash in the pool.
Reading is engrossing. I don’t need EMail on the iPad while I’m reading; in fact, it would likely lessen the reading experience, and thus indirectly make me think less of the device itself.
In other words, I don’t think multitasking is particularly necessary on the iPad, and I doubt few other than the pundits would miss it if Apple never introduced it.
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By the way, I don’t attempt to multitask myself. I didn’t look at EMail, another website, or the proposal I’m also working on after I began this 800-word post, although I did do some research before I began. I do not allow my EMail app to pop up notices that I have new mail, tweets, or whatever else might be happening in the recesses of my computer.
Multitasking is inefficient.
Maybe it’s just that Apple is convinced they know what’s best for us. That’s sort of been their attitude anyway, and they often have it mostly right.
