[xtremesniper]

Just got my z10 days ago and i think the opposite would be god too aka to have certain apps that would not appear in the frames at all for example, search, and clock. (they currently do at the moment and i find it absolutely unnecesaary

I would agree with that, I think. The clock, phone, and search apps should be one of those "always running in the background" apps similar to BB OS7 and not counting towards the 8 apps. But that's a design decision that I don't think you will see changing.

[sandmanfvr]

This all makes me laugh. Do you NEED 8 or more apps open on a phone? I doubt it. No offense to people but it is a phone not a pc/Mac and I really would like see somebody show me a real world need to actively (not letting apps set there and be open and not used) and use 8 or more apps a time.......

[shabbs]

No OS in the market right now notifies you before closing apps. Not iOS, not Android, and not Windows Phone. You know why? Because the idea is that a properly coded app will still give you notifications (push) or play music (like Nobex) without you intervening. As for the 8 app limit, none of the other OS's are able to run more than that. On iPhone 5, the limit is around 5-7, depending on the app...though it could be as low as 2, if you run a game. On Android, my Galaxy Nexus would not open more than 3 apps at a time, and if I play a game, everything else closes. Now with my Nexus 4, I'm able to run around 8-10, but if I do that, I can literally count my battery falling, because android doesn't freeze apps properly. Either, they're closed (back key/exit) or running in the background (home key), so I don't think I've ever ran more than 4 apps simultaneously outside of testing. Realistically, blackberry limited it to 8 so that apps start closing without you having to do anything. They could've made it 100 if they wanted, but that adds more work to the user as they now have to actively seek running apps and closing them. Most users don't want to deal with that, and that's why 8 apps is appropriate. In the future, blackberry should make the number custom. That way, users like you can go nuts and open 100 apps at once and watch their battery drain.

Refresh my memory, did any of the previous BB OS' close apps automatically? I don't recall that ever happening on any of my previous BBOS'. The introduction of ARM in BB OS v7 provided a nice monitor for apps that chewed up memory and were closed, but it was done with a notification. Opening a gob load of apps on my 9900 never closed other apps. Sure, the phone performance took a hit, but that's expected and it's not often that I'd have a slew of apps all running at the same time.

I guess "users like me" should just fall in line and be happy that our OS behaves just like all the other mobile OS' because that's all I should expect.



Sorry to trouble you with these trivial, mundane, ridiculous and clearly ignorant questions.

[InvalidUser0510]

Refresh my memory, did any of the previous BB OS' close apps automatically? I don't recall that ever happening on any of my previous BBOS'. The introduction of ARM in BB OS v7 provided a nice monitor for apps that chewed up memory and were closed, but it was done with a notification. Opening a gob load of apps on my 9900 never closed other apps. Sure, the phone performance took a hit, but that's expected and it's not often that I'd have a slew of apps all running at the same time.

I guess "users like me" should just fall in line and be happy that our OS behaves just like all the other mobile OS' because that's all I should expect.



Sorry to trouble you with these trivial, mundane, ridiculous and clearly ignorant questions.

The previous OS's were running tiny little apps that barely had any graphics, and barely any memory footprint. We're not talking about 100kb apps here. That is the reason why ALL MODERN OS's currently close apps without notifying the user. Instead of making the user worry, they force programmers make better apps that deal with being closed suddenly, and come back exactly how you expect them to, or continue doing whatever you want in the background (ie. the Nobex app will not close if you open more, or the music player will continue to play music, etc.), give you push notifications for messages/calls even when the app is closed, etc.

Oh, and I wanted to add that you seem to be wearing rose-tinted glasses when looking at the old OS. The fact that you claim it never closed apps without a notification is BS. I've had plenty of apps that "close" but remain in the task switcher, and just reload when you go into them (ex. the browser) or completely stop playing when you put them in the background (ex. video player).

Again, if you want to go back to the days where apps were all text based and were 100kb on average, then stick to the legacy BB OS. Those days are over. Most apps now are in the 5-100mb range, and they hog up a lot more system resources. Keeping them constantly running is not an option.

[shabbs]

Well, the true test will be when I get this in my hands on Tuesday and start to use it daily... I'm sure I'll be full of BB10 love after that.

[brian_peterson]

So, this thread is a little off-topic... My question was not if you should be allowed to. My question was what happened to the 9th app.

Also, for some out there saying "it's just like other Mobile OS's" are all wrong. The way the BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook task switcher works is that it only shows you which apps are currently running. The task switchers on Android, and iOS DO NOT do that. They fake it out. They could be running, or they could be closed. You have absolutely no idea what the current state of the App is. iOS allows you to "close an app from the switcher"... That app could have already been closed. Most likely it was, as iOS has very strict multitasking rules, and the app almost always immediately closes. Android is a little more fuzzy in that regard. I am a Software Engineer and I have coded for both iOS and Android, and what I am describing is exactly what happens.

So no, BB 10 does not do it like everyone else. And I think that is fine. But don't make it sound like it's just like Android and iOS because they are not even close to the same... With Android I can go back to any "recent app" and "close it" and it would still be in my task switcher... Whereas BB 10 automatically closes it out for you, and removes it from your "Task Switcher"... This is a HUGE difference. Things in BB 10 will start disappearing from the task switcher... It will happen on Android and iOS, but as I said before those apps may have already been closed when that happens.

I think it's a fine compromise. Because no matter what anybody says "saving the state" of the app is never the same as switching back to a live running app. App Developers almost never get the app back into the exact state it was before the "soft close" on other platforms. So, I think BB 10 is way better in that sense.

But I think it's important that we know what happens with the 9th App, and what the exceptions are. It sounds like if it's a GPS, or Media app they can be exempt from the rule, and the task killer will kill another app. It also seems like most "alert" type apps like Google Talk will close and throw a alert in the HUB. I think this is all great.

But I agree that their are some features lacking. Like pinning an app, and having it run on startup...

Oh and a side note about the browser tab resurrection on start-up concern. Don't worry, on CRASH BlackBerry 10 will detect that and not resurrect the tabs. No Catch 22. No developer would add a feature like that without protecting against that edge case.

[Omnitech]

If there really is some mysterious category of "uncloseable app", then A) I'd like to know what qualifies an app for such a status, and B) what happens when you have launched 9 "uncloseable apps".

Re: the "edge case" of getting browsers in an unstartable loop: I learned this lesson back in the days of Netscape 3.x: never have "autostart pages" in a browser. All you need is malware, unfriendly markup or content on your "startup page" to create an insurmountable problem, and in the Windows 3.x/9.x days there was an extremely good chance that locking up the browser would wedge the entire OS as well.

Opera addressed this problem earlier than other browsers because it was the first browser to have tabs, which magnifies the problem. The solution was their startup dialog that allows you to choose whether you want to "restore sessions" or not on startup.

[darkehawke]

can someone give an example of where you need to have 9 running apps all at once without closing other then the times you forget to close them?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk

[jarrodmeyer]

Another one is when I am using the browser and I have a few tabs open, close the browser to do other stuff on the phone and then if I open 8 more apps, when I click the browser again it opens the start page and only that page, all the tabs have gone. Good for battery, speed and memory use, but like kevin said, would be nice to be able to 'pin' a few open or to the top of the 8 list.

Are you making a statement or asking a question? IOW, does this actually happen on your Z10 to the browser?

Tx for clearing up

Signed,
Busily making Z10 purchasing decision

[brian_peterson]

It's more darkehawke the cases where you are a poor multi-tasker, where you don't close your apps down. For example I could be listening to Nobex, and I never close apps down... I keep opening up different apps all while listening to Nobex. Because Nobex uses a special API (up to the developer to decide to use it) it won't close down once I hit the 9th app. Instead the 7th app will shut down, unless it's also a special app. Yes technically all 8 apps could be using this special API. But you would be hard press to find this situation, and it's really hypothetical.

The point of this thread was to understand what happens in these cases. It's just nice to know the limits of the system. Even if these use cases are nuts!

My point about the tab browser catch-22 is because of the Netscape example cited. Developers have become smarter than that over time as the example of Opera was given. BlackBerry did the same I am sure (that is to break a crash loop)

[shabbs]

can someone give an example of where you need to have 9 running apps all at once without closing other then the times you forget to close them?

[sandmanfvr]

can someone give an example of where you need to have 9 running apps all at once without closing other then the times you forget to close them?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk

Exactly. You dont need that many open and using all 8 actively. I like the os manages the open apps unlike android and iOS.

[InvalidUser0510]

Are you making a statement or asking a question? IOW, does this actually happen on your Z10 to the browser?

Tx for clearing up

Signed,
Busily making Z10 purchasing decision

No, there is a setting to either open the browser to the home page or open the previous tabs. That guy just didn't know about it.

Exactly. You dont need that many open and using all 8 actively. I like the os manages the open apps unlike android and iOS.

They all manage the apps the same way, actually. The only difference is that Other OS's keep Closed apps in the app switcher (think of it as a Recent app menu, with the most recently used apps running in the background like in BB10, rather than a List of running programs). That's the point. The modern way is to make the developer do the work and make sure that their app resumes properly even if closed suddenly instead of hogging system resources, and making the user see a prompt every time an app. needs to close.

[brian_peterson]

BTW: I never said you will never need more than 8 running...

[msps]

What about VoIP ?

I don't need and to be honest do not want VoIP client to be one of the 8 active frames
I'd prefer it to just seamlessly run in the background, always active.
A small icon in status bar (next to battery/NFC/ bluetooth icons etc) would do
I'd expect VoIP app to work just like bluetooth you switch it on, an icon comes up and it stays on until you switch it off.
It stays active and I can always answer a VoIP phonecall, when I make a call I get an option to use voip or mobile network to make a call.

That how it works on Android, Symbian, legacy BlackBerry, iOS and WP8

[oddboy]

Read the docs on the Push service api.

Apps can register to receive push notices and tell the OS what to do when a push notification comes on - like launching the app for example. So apps that use the Push service don't need to be running all the time, but appear to be because they launch when a push message comes on.

Something else to consider is that a browser is quite different from a chat app. A browser is "Single User ". You open it, browse, close it. A chat is multiuser. You don't know in advance when a contact will want to chat with you, so a chat app needs some way to receive a notification that it needs to launch. A browser doesn't.

[msps]

This all makes me laugh. Do you NEED 8 or more apps open on a phone? I doubt it. No offense to people but it is a phone not a pc/Mac and I really would like see somebody show me a real world need to actively (not letting apps set there and be open and not used) and use 8 or more apps a time.......

Here you are

battery monitor
clock/alarm/calendar
weather
satnav
radio/music player
phone app
VoIP
whatsapp

If I open (very likely) one of:
casual game, file manager, settings, dropbox
a few of the above mentioned 8 active frames get closed.

[darkehawke]

BTW: I never said you will never need more than 8 running...

Yeah but i think some people have implied it's needed

[darkehawke]

Here you are

battery monitor
clock/alarm/calendar
weather
satnav
radio/music player
phone app
VoIP
whatsapp

If I open (very likely) one of:
casual game, file manager, settings, dropbox
a few of the above mentioned 8 active frames get closed.

i cant imagine why you'd need to keep these as an active frame.
Whatsapp should be tied directly to the hub.
I can only think of the phone app while taking a call, but then you wouldnt really need VOIP as an active frame.
And sat Nav seems to be more useful as running in full screen, why would you reduce it to an active frame then open a game or play with settings? i assume you'd be driving at the time.

[shabbs]

i cant imagine why you'd need to keep these as an active frame.
Whatsapp should be tied directly to the hub.
I can only think of the phone app while taking a call, but then you wouldnt really need VOIP as an active frame.
And sat Nav seems to be more useful as running in full screen, why would you reduce it to an active frame then open a game or play with settings? i assume you'd be driving at the time.

Whatsapp does not always notify if it's not running. The side loaded version is not exactly stable. Ideally, the native app would work as you suggest. For now, we keep it running.

[shabbs]

Yeah but i think some people have implied it's needed

I love it when other people tell me what I need...



Just saying...

[smoothrunnings]

If you need more than 8 applications running then you need to buy yourself a laptop computer! I would love to see someone being able to multitask and manage 8 applications at one time!! LOL

[shabbs]

If you need more than 8 applications running then you need to buy yourself a laptop computer! I would love to see someone being able to multitask and manage 8 applications at one time!! LOL

Fair enough, but that's not my point...

[msps]

i cant imagine why you'd need to keep these as an active frame..

Why would one need true multitasking at all?
One can buy an iphone...

Having active frames... active, doesn't mean I have to use all 8 apps exactly at the same time.
I just want the ability to switch between a few app I use most, when I need it and not wait several second before the app eg satnav loads

you wouldnt really need VOIP as an active frame.

Agree, I'd prefer it to run in the background
But theres only one voip app available on BB10 and I have no choice but keep its active frame open

[Omnitech]

Having active frames... active, doesn't mean I have to use all 8 apps exactly at the same time.
I just want the ability to switch between a few app I use most, when I need it and not wait several second before the app eg satnav loads


Agree, I'd prefer it to run in the background
But theres only one voip app available on BB10 and I have no choice but keep its active frame open

MS-DOS was known as a non-multitasking OS.

But that didn't change the fact that there will always be a use and demand for "background processes", even if those processes aren't technically applications you can interact with directly.

This is why some enterprising individuals developed the concept of a "TSR" in MS-DOS - a "terminate and stay resident" process. If it weren't for that, there never would have been any memory managers, networking, anti-virus, or thousands of other things that came to be thought of as essential components of PC computing back in the MS-DOS era.

By the same token, what seems to be missing so far in the BB10 model is the idea of a background app, something you don't necessarily need to interact with all the time or have an active frame for, or something that just needs to be able to remain open so that data or some kind of state is not lost if it has to close/reopen.