Saturday, March 08, 2008

iPhone SDK, Second Thoughts!

As people delve into the details of Apple's iPhone SDK, a few interesting issues are emerging. One developer guideline that is generating some concern is from Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for iPhone:

Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.

To be fair, for most applications, this would be preferred behavior. There is no reason for Super Monkey Ball (for example) to continue running in the background, using up CPU cycles and Memory. Instead, as Apple suggests, the current state should be saved and returned when the application is relaunched.
Join the discussion at MacRumors.
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