On 1/27/2012 10:50 AM, Jim Saklad wrote:
>
>
>>> 2. iOS can and routinely does do multitasking, else you could not
>>> listen to music while doing anything else, or browse the web while
>>> making a phone call, or get maps and directions from TomTom while
>>> listening to podcasts.
>>
>> Correct, but you can't be writing a document in Pages while reviewing
>> financial reports in Numbers. So any multitasking currently is limited
>> to what Apple felt it could allow safely.
>
> I just looked.
> Neither of these apps are ones that *do* anything in the background
> (such as play music or video or plot your location). So the very meaning
> of multitasking in this case is quite limited.
>
> If I open a table in Numbers, then switch to Pages and open a document
> there, then switch back to Numbers, I find I am exactly where I was when
> I *left* Numbers. And when I switch back to Pages, I find that I am
> exactly where I was in the document when I *left* Pages.
>
> So, in fact, Pages and Numbers *do* multitask on the iPad.
>
> What, exactly, do you mean by "you can't be writing a document in Pages
> while reviewing financial reports in Numbers" ?
>
On my Windows computer and from what I've seen of Mac computers, I can
have both applications open at once and can be looking at one while
working in the other. I can copy/paste between the two (or more)
applications that I happen to have running at the same time. If I give
a time-consuming task to one of the apps, such as having WordPerfect
compile an index of a large document, that can occur while I then do
some work in a spreadsheet, and when I come back to WordPerfect, it will
still be compiling that index. That's what I consider multi-tasking.
Some of my computer-based music applications will compile a wav file of
a composition I'm working on, and depending on the length of the
application that can take quite a long time. When I switch to a
different application, that music program will continue to create the
wav file even as I work in a different application.
I can't do that on the iPad -- when I exit an app, whatever I have been
having done in that app is suspended until I get back to that app.
That's not multi-tasking. And I can't have both open at once so I can
see the numbers in Numbers while typing a document in Pages.
[snip]
--
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
