back to article iOS 4.2 multi-tasking comes to the iPad

iOS version 4.2 is to be launched today, bringing Apple's idea of multi-tasking to the iPad and a load of other good stuff to iOS devices. The update was announced at the beginning of September, and beta releases have been knocking around for the more adventuresome Apple fan, but later today will see a general release of the …

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  1. Chad H.

    Scroll Lock

    Surely though you can enable the Scroll lock via the software option like on an iPhone (Bring up the task list with a double home tap, and swipe in the opposite direction to your other programs)

    1. Stu Wilson
      Unhappy

      LockOrMuteGate

      dibs on this new word.

      to be honest, I'm in the Lock button camp, im much more used to locking the orientation with the button as a much more useful feature that muting the iPad.

      here's the process under 4.2

      hold the ipad in the desired orientation

      (optional rotate the ipad to the last locked orientation if currently holding it worng)

      swipe the lock image

      double press the button

      swipe back to the orientation lock (at the last count that was 4 swipes on my ipad)

      hit the orientation lock

      rotate the ipad to the new orientation

      hit the orientation lock

      heres the process under 4.1

      hold the ipad in the desired orientation

      click the button off

      click the button on

      IMHO Apple 'ave seriously dropped a bollock here

      1. alexh2o
        Pint

        soon though...

        liking the new word!

        but as far as the button goes, i understand the whole consistency across the phone and the pad thing, as to why its now a mute.

        give it till june/july and im sure theyll add voice commands to replace it... "ipad! lock screen."

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Orientation lock

    Correct me if I'm wrong but you can still 'orientation lock' the iPad, only now (4.2+) it works as it does on the iPhone 4. Double tap the home button to bring up the task bar and it appears on there somewhere (scroll left/right to find it).

    I don't have an iPad running 4.2 right now to check personally.

  3. Lusty
    Jobs Horns

    Alarming

    No mention of fixing my frikkin alarm clock though! If it's not fixed, the phone is going in the blender and the parts returned to big steve

    1. GrahamS
      Stop

      Really?

      I mean, yeah, it's a mildly annoying bug that they should definitely fix - but why get so wound up about it like it is a major dealbreaker?

      Just set your recurring alarm an hour early, or just don't use recurring alarms, or just use one of the many alarm clock apps.

      1. Ammaross Danan
        FAIL

        A working alarm clock....

        ...there's an app for that! (because we can't code a proper one ourself!)

      2. BorkedAgain
        Jobs Horns

        You forgot...

        ...and it's your fault for holding it wrong or something.

    2. Jean-Luc

      time changes, 'guv

      If your alarm is now going off an hour late, it's because recurrence alarms didn't catch the end of daylight savings time. You need to delete the alarm and re-enter it.

      You might also be able to just modify the label or its alarm time or its recurrence or wave a dead chicken around your iPhone. But delete and re-entry definitely did the trick for me.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Brilliant!

    Welcome to the 21st century, behold, the birth of multitasking. Oh wait.

    1. Chris Miller

      <husky voice>

      This is not just multitasking ... this is *Apple* multitasking </husky voice>

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Chris millar

        ITYM 'This is not real multitasking....'

    2. ThomH

      On the other hand...

      Apple's multitasking tablet is still on the market before most of the big name competitors and they've managed to grab a 95% market share from their eight months on the market so far.

      But I'm sure things would have been better if they'd done them your way around.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        @ThomH

        Yes indeed, if they had satisfied critics then they would have sold more items, that's exactly my point. For example, I'm not buying one, but if all (or most) issues surrounding iPads and Apple in general were sorted, then of course I would; I don't have anything against hardware. Don't be a blind follower (aka fanboi).

    3. BingBong

      Silly AC

      It's 21st centry multitasking that is fast app switching with CPU time-slicing for specific API functions ... iOS itself is of course fully time-sliced multitasking and always has been ... Apple are rightly more concerned with the smooth running of the device, its interactive speed and enhanced battery life .. I couldn't agree more.

      They took time to think through touch-cut-and-paste and multitasking and did a good job on both.

    4. bazza Silver badge

      Brilliant indeed

      To boast about bringing multitasking to the world when just about every other platform out there has been doing it one way or another for a decade or more is a bit crazy.

      I can sort of understand Apple's point. At the moment willy nilly multi-tasking is a battery killer and it does take disciplined programming to make sure that your app doesn't burn electrons unnecessarily. Symbian foundered on the rock of trying to impose discipline on programmers. Apple are sort of constricting what programmers can do. Android, so far as I know, doesn't stop anyone doing anything really, and I bet that there's a lot of flat Android batteries out there by the end of the day.

      So what's really needed is a platform that can do an arbitary amount of multitasking all day, every day on a single charge. Heck, what's wrong with two days on a single charge? No one can do that at the moment. But not long ago no one could do any of this at all in a hand-sized portable device. So we have progress. But who will be the first to get to the golden goal of running all day? Apple? Android? Windows Phone 7? Symbian (cough)?.

      There's plenty of competition in the Android space, and battery life will always be a killer selling point. So that competition will likely drive the Android manufacturers down a fairly rapid development race towards even lower power consumption / higher battery capacities. So Android may get there first. But Android handsets are by and large made from off the shelf bits that anyone (ish) can buy, including Apple. So Apple can sit back looking pretty whilst everyone else does the R&D necessary to pull of a truly all-day handset, pick up the chips, and push out a comparable handset with all the attendant Apple blingishness. The WP7 phones can pick up on the components too.

      So one day the question of whether to enable multi-tasking will be completely irrelevant. But not yet. Personally I consider a Symbian platform with well written apps (and I include the GUI in that) to be the best technical solution out there at the moment. It's a shame that no such thing actually exists, because if it did I think we'd already be at the point of having whole-day operation.

  5. Stu
    Alert

    Huh?

    Still no built-in calculator, clock, stocks, weather apps, and most importantly the voice memos app!? I mean these (most?) were even present on the iPod Touch, and they couldn't be arsed to build them into the iPad!

    I'm basing this on the latest betas of iOS 4.2 for iPad. If they've added them for the actual release, then YAY (doubt it though).

  6. @brykins

    Pointless scroll lock change

    I am firmly in the pro-scroll-lock-camp. 90% of the time I have my iPad on mute, whereas I am very often finding myself locking the screen. Maybe using the screen lock ten times per day and the mute option on/off less thaonxe per day.

    What's REALLY annoying is that a press-and-hold of the volume down button has always muted it quickly, so why the need for a dedicated button right next to it? And the new scroll lock function is a lot harder/slower to use.

  7. dave 93
    Unhappy

    Can't stream the display over Airplay

    Only movies and music. Shame. Maybe in iOS5?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lame

    WebOS has had better multitasking and for longer. And intuitive cut-and-paste. I guess the difference is that Palm chose to wait and include these basic features from the start instead of tagging them on later and leaving users stuck for a period.

  9. RAMChYLD
    Boffin

    It begs to be asked tho...

    Will it run iPhone4 retina-enhanced apps at their native 960x480 resolution instead of the 3GS standard that is 480x320? I regularly run iPhone apps on my iPad, and an iPad does have a higher res than a iPhone 4 (1024x768) and will benefit from the better res provided by running retina-enhanced apps at the enhanced (widescreen) resolution.

    I'd test it out myself (having already downloaded the firmware at work so I could just plug in the iPad and continue from there when I get home), but then I'm stuck at work for another 2 hours and 40 minutes, and will probably be stuck in a traffic jam for another hour or so.

  10. Mark 179

    @bazza

    My HTC Desire already lasts two days, no problems.

    |I don't think any smartphone stands out with regard to battery life, they all need to improve.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    oi! Reg!

    What? No mention of magical and revolutionary this time???

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    EDIT: In regards to Retina apps

    Well, got home, installed it, and was somewhat disappointed. Retina-enhanced apps won't work in retina-enhanced mode on the iPad, instead sticking to the older 320x480 mode. Also, I found out that the AirPrint server was, perhaps for HP's partnership advantage, not distributed with the OSX 10.6.5 update, and thus I can't print that few documents made using Office^2 HD.

    And to top it off, after upgrading, I lost all my game progresses. Backup wouldn't restore, something about being made on an older OS.

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