I’m not convinced that the task switcher needs to exist. Since apps in the task switcher aren’t really running, the task switcher isn’t so much a task switcher as it is a list of recently used apps
The task switcher lets you switch back and forth between apps one handed using your thumb. I think that's part of the rationale for it. Also, the Least Recently Used algorithm will dynamically make a short list of the actually used apps in a user's collection. Most users probably spend 80% of time in a small minority of their apps.
Yep. I also think it's a function of the location of the two apps. For whatever reason I find myself switching between apps on pages (say) 1 and 4. A surprisingly large hassle after a few switches. Yes, I could move one for a while to get around the issue, but this obviates the need for remodeling, as that other app will be right there.
One handed? So no pinch-to-switch-apps gesture? (it seems odd to point out one handed operation of an iPhone feature when so much of the reason people say it is superior are the things that require two hands to operate).
For me, pinching and multitouch are easy and natural, but often I just use a double tap to zoom instead.
In this case, the real alternative to the task switcher is flicking through multiple pages of apps, which surely is more difficult than a simple row of recently used apps. It's hard to imagine a pinching gesture that would be usable here, without interfering with the current app.
I don't understand how the task switcher makes a difference for one-handed operation. Either you hit home once, swipe, and tap to open an app, or you double-tap home, swipe at the bottom area of the screen, and tap to open an app. It seems to me that not using the task switcher is more one-hand-friendly, since you can swipe wherever you want?
I see your point. Switching to an app that isn't in the four most-recently-used apps of the first task switcher screen would likely require a similar effort as using the multiple pages of the home screen.
However, if a user is switching between three or four apps for a given period of time, those apps may very well lie on very different pages of the Springboard. The most frequently used apps are not always the apps that matter now.
Even when you would need to swipe in the task switcher, surely it is easier to find an app among 4 instead of 16?
(Maybe the task switcher really is only useful for a small subset of use cases, in which case your position would seem to be the logical one.)
It'll be interesting to see if the older phones get this. As you say it can function as a recently used list, even if those apps are not running, the user shouldn't have to care about the distinction.
One thing I have not seen mentioned anywhere is that iPhone 4.0 make web apps more usable than before, since it no longer reload the web app every time you switch back and forth from the home screen, as long as it's still active in the task switcher.
When does it reload the web app every time? That's a memory limitation, not a task switching one. I've noticed Safari tends to keep loading pages and rendering them in the background.
What I meant was web apps that are added to the home screen. Previously it works just like native apps: web apps will need to store and resume its state every time it launch or quit. This cause web apps without manifest file to reload itself every time it launches.
In 4.0, it works just exactly like in Safari: as long as the app don't get killed from the task switcher, its state are resumed automatically.
Android has an almost-identical "task switcher" (press and hold the Home button to show a popup of recent apps). I don't think anyone I know uses it regularly - and I just spent 18 months working in a 30-person Android software company.
As do I. It's one of the best things about Android, I've found. Going back and forth between two applications directly is very, very efficient for using a mobile OS, I've found. I think the author is wrong in saying that it appears as a "random selection" of apps. If I'm using it, it's because I remembered that I was just using another app. I'm not using it for discovery; I'm using it as a shortcut.
I use it all the time, too. It's essentially a taskbar for recently used or running apps. If I follow a link from Seesmic or Gmail, but want to keep the browser open, I <hold Home> and swap back to mail. Or maybe a song comes on that I don't feel like listening to at the moment, so I swap over and skip it in the same manner.
This is my primary way of switching between recent applications. Take it with a grain of salt, though, as the Android way of dealing with App icons is a world of a difference from iPhone.
Android uses a separate and almost useless alphabetically-sorted application's drawer. You are able to put applications on the home screens, but chances are that you are messing with an application that you don't use very frequently and thus have not placed it onto a home screen. In addition, on stock Android (not rooted/jailbroken), you only have 3 home screens.
Android OS 2.1 increases it to 5 homescreens. In addition, you can put folders on any of the Android homescreens that work almost identically (from what I gather from the description in the article) to the way folders work in iPhone OS4.
I think others have mentioned that you can get 3rd party apps for Android that increase the number of home screen to at least 7. These do not require rooting or anything else unusual, just a quick download from the Market.
WRT the 3 home screens, there are quite a few replacement Home apps that increase it to 7+ - PandaHome, aHome, and Open Home are the first that come to mind.
I can only speak for myself, but I definitely use task switching all the time. I spent a lot of time with a Nokia N810 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N810 before I had a smartphone, and its interface was more like a regular desktop, with a taskbar, etc.
Symbian has had essentially the same kind of task switcher for many years (hold the Home button to display a popup of open apps). AFAIK, nobody uses that either. It's not discoverable.
Sorry. I actually use the Symbian task switcher too. I should have said: "I suspect most users are completely oblivious to this method of switching between tasks". (The task switcher is also accessible from the main menu by pressing Option and choosing it from the popup menu, so that's probably how most people find it.)
I know, another article about the iPhone, but I really liked this bit (with relevance beyond the iPhone OS):
«I think it’s fair to say that most people involved in interaction design tend to agree that hierarchical file systems have largely failed their users. […] However, when we say ‹hierarchical file systems don’t work›, most of us end that sentence with ‹so we need to replace them with something better› in our heads. Apple, on the other hand, ended the sentence with ‹so we’re not going to bother with this stuff, let’s just leave this up to each individual application.›»
A good article posted yesterday that was lost under the Steve Jobs articles:
"When good interfaces go crufty"
"So, the Mac’s designers invented something called a “file selection dialog”, or “filepicker” — a lobotomized file manager, for opening and saving documents when the main file manager wasn’t running."
To play devil's advocate for a minute: One possibility is that the most useful method of organizing data is necessarily different for each application.
There are even applications for which hierarchical organization is entirely appropriate at the UI level: An obvious example is an outliner. And it's not a coincidence that our filesystem UIs have little icons of file-cabinet drawers and file folders: The real world features file cabinets and folders, and people have traditionally been able to make sense of those, hierarchy and all... in a context which naturally fits into a hierarchical scheme.
It's worth asking whether the cardinal sin of the hierarchical file system isn't the fact that hierarchical is innately confusing, but that for thirty years and more programmers have labored to fit non-hierarchical problems into a hierarchical paradigm, often in totally unnatural ways. Replacing that One True Paradigm with another One True Paradigm might just prolong the fundamental mistake.
That's a great point. I certainly think applications should have the freedom to offer their own custom view of the user's data (as you point out, even hierarchical views, if that makes sense in their context - for example, it makes sense for MP3 players, where there is a natural hierarchy along the lines of Band -> Album -> Song), but I also think Apple should show some leadership here, both on a UI level, as well as on a technical level (for synchronization, versioning and similar features).
I agree. For certain applications, strongly hierarchical organization is appropriate. I think it's probably best if they're separate per-application hierarchies. The One Tree file system model is really aesthetically appealing to us hierarchically-structured thinkers, but most people don't seem to think that way.
Interesting to note how it's done on the iPad: Photos, for example, are stored in a hierarchy (in certain views at least; there's not a strong sense that the "true" scheme they're stored in is an hierarchical one), but no folder metaphor is used. It's just stacks of images.
Likewise, the "folders" in OS 4.0 are that in name and function only. They are represented more like the stacks of photos, though the objects "in" them are shown as tiled (with a linear view when tapped, for easier picking) rather than overlapping, though, in that case. But an opaque container isn't used.
So, in both cases, the objects are collected without the container being drawn attention to.
This may limit the number of levels of hierarchy that are possible (stacks of photos within stacks of photos would break the metaphor... not that people put real-life folders within folders very often), but most users don't like deep hierarchies anyway, and the extra hierarchy of objects being stored "within" apps helps mitigate that as well as segregate things somewhat naturally by type.
Of course certain tasks will always require deep, complex hierarchies.
Real world filing cabinets are not infinitely hierarchical, they are very flat. I don't think I've ever seen someone use a filing cabinet with nested folders. You have one list of alphabetized folders with the files directly in it. In this way I think the current "folders" solution in the home screen more closely matches what people expect.
When you have to drill down through more than a few levels of hierarchy to get to what they want, it becomes confusing to keep track of, especially because folders create groups of arbitrary types so everyone has to build their own hierarchical system for each type of data. So while my nested folders for photos represents year/month/event my nested folders in my music library mean artist/album and my Documents folder is a mess where I try and make up groups of things I will remember again later. "does this piece of writing belong in my Essay folder or in my Journal folder?" Who can say? and if I pick one now, what's to say when I go looking for it later I might not categorize it differently?
Things like iPhoto make those decisions for you, just add your pictures to it and it will make you group them as an event, and that is all you have to do. iPhoto actually lets you look for photos in several different ways then: hierarchically by year/month/event, event in overall order, by who is in the picture, or where it was taken. That is a lot of flexibility that lets me search for a photo in whatever way I'm thinking about it in the moment, rather than having to search for a file based on however I originally decided to organize them on the file system.
A straight hierarchical file system is pretty limiting: it only allows you to find files based on one organizational method. That's why search is becoming so useful and why tagging seemed like such a good idea. It would be great if we could find out what the best way for me to keep track of my writing is without me having to think about how it is structured on disk.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that I agree with you that we need different organizational methods for different pieces of data, and that I think nested "folders" is going to be the right solution very rarely. And I agree with Lukas that there needs to be a lot of work done to help people share files and move files to and from the iPad easily.
Before using it, I too was skeptical about the task switcher, but it works really well. It is fast and works about as well (and as quickly in practice) as alt-tab on a Mac or PC.
The author makes a good point about the difference in icon placements between the folder icon and the folder itself.
For file management, iPhone OS 3.2+ is already half way there. It syncs specific files from one's computer to specific apps. What we need is to extend this and have a system-wide documents database that is akin to the contacts, calendars, and music database APIs. Version control support in this API would be cool as well.
I installed 4.0 a few days ago on my 3G and only notable difference is the folders. I think to use multi-tasking I need to upgrade my phone to 3gs? Stinks if that's correct!
Did you install 4.0 on a device you use regularly? If so, are there not many bugs hindering your usage? I've been thinking about doing this as well but Apple recommends against it.
THe app store gets a little wonky and one time the phone would not charge or power down the usual way. I had to hard reset it by going into settings - reset - reset network settings. Other then that no major issues.
I only have one iPhone, but I do have iTouch I use to test our app on.
Well Id like to upgrade to the 3gs and I do so for $200, but only way I can get a 3gs due to cellphone contract is pay $500 or more. Which is the cost of the iPad, which does not makes sense. Is Apple saying after 4 years of the iPhone in production the cost to manufacture both the iPhone & iPad are the same? Bullcrap AT&T/Apple!
I think Apple is too busy counting their billions of dollars from ATT subsidized iPhones. If they lower the consumer price then they have to lower the price that ATT pays them as well.
"Unfortunately, notifications were not addressed in iPhone OS 4.0."
OK, it was kind of passive aggressive of you (the author of the post) to just state this without any explanation backing it up, but I'll bite. Please do give us your rant about how local notifications (introduced in OS 4.0) in addition to the already existing push notifications does not address notifications.
Well, it wasn't my intention to be passive-aggressive. If anything, it seems active-aggressive :-)
The article is about the iPhone's user interface, not about the backend; local notifications have nothing to do with the user interface. And I simply assumed that everyone who has used an iPhone knows that the notification UI is very basic; you mostly get modal alert boxes, which are very easy to accidentally discard.
More specifically, if you receive more than one notification, the former is pretty much lost. Your app icon is annotated with a number but you have no idea what happened if you have several icons already annotated.
I haven't been following the evolution iPhone OS releases during the beta phase, but isn't it possible that features are added (or removed) before the final release this summer?
It's possible, but Apple generally only adds small features after the initial introduction of a new system. I would be extremely surprised if something like notifications received a total overhaul for the final version of 4.0; I think they would have mentioned that.
The new multitasking model, recently used app switcher, and folders are sound a hell of a lot like the equivalents in Android. (which isn't a complaint by the way... ) I wonder why they didn't also adopt a notification system similar to the pull down notification drawer in Android?
It's worth noting that the task switcher is probably more important for the iPad. I very much intend to write blog posts and the like on my iPad and being able to quickly switch between a couple of different applications while doing so will make the task much more pleasant.
The task switcher also function as apps killer. Holding your finger on one of those app will make popup the delete button to completely shut down the apps, background apis included.
That would be confusing! Not at all. I'm simply saying your take is a lot like a popover and think that Apple's implementation though not perfect, is closer to a folder. Actually, to be exact they should have really called it "Drawers" because that's how their animated and in a drawer, contents do indeed get shuffled around!
Although, I've had instances when handling bulky folders and moving them around, the top most documents would get accidentally rearranged! ;-)
I agree, drawers would have been an apt metaphor. Also, drawers get stuck sometimes, so that would be something interesting Apple could emulate, as well :-)
The task switcher lets you switch back and forth between apps one handed using your thumb. I think that's part of the rationale for it. Also, the Least Recently Used algorithm will dynamically make a short list of the actually used apps in a user's collection. Most users probably spend 80% of time in a small minority of their apps.