[ubizmo]

Are you serious? Most OS's don't allow "headless" apps. Actually, out of BB10, iOS, WP8, and Android, only Android allows it. As a former Android (Nexus 4) user, I hope that Blackberry NEVER implements this stupid strategy. You have no idea how many useful apps I had to uninstall on my N4, because they run in the background.

If BB does implement this feature, I would at least hope that it requires a "open on startup" permission that users can disable. On Android, if the app runs on startup, you have no way of disabling it. Even closing it through a task manger doesn't work. The daemon keeps bringing it back.

BBOS had this feature, though. It seems to me that the problem with headless apps in Android is that there isn't enough (any?) oversight in Google Play, so badly behaved apps get in. On my 9900, I wanted QuickLaunch and other apps to load on startup. The only one that I know of that misbehaved was Pandora, which always loaded on startup, couldn't be killed, and just ran as a kind of phantom process. The misbehavior wasn't huge--it just used about 30 secs of CPU time a day--but it bugged me.

[russnash]

The one simple thing I would like to see, which I believe would remove a lot of the worries / problems with background apps, is a way for the user to view headless apps that are currently running (with details of their resource usage). Not knowing what is running in the background on BBOS was frustrating when trying to debug battery consumption issues.

[neilwick]

I guess the os isn't as complete as we thought it was

All the essential things are there but no OS is so complete that something can't be added. A lot of new features are upcoming in BlackBerry 10 in the near future. That, I know.

[peter9477]

To ensure expectations aren't unrealistic however, note that these features are not expected even in beta form before BBLive in May. Please don't interpret "soon" as meaning in 10.1 with the Q10, for example, as we don't expect significant new features in that release.

Posted via CB10

[neilwick]

To clarify what I meant by "soon" I'm expecting various small but important new features in the OS over the next 12 months. I'm pretty sure that things like more customizable notifications will be coming within a year.

[notfanboy]

Are you serious? Most OS's don't allow "headless" apps. Actually, out of BB10, iOS, WP8, and Android, only Android allows it. As a former Android (Nexus 4) user, I hope that Blackberry NEVER implements this stupid strategy. You have no idea how many useful apps I had to uninstall on my N4, because they run in the background.

If BB does implement this feature, I would at least hope that it requires a "open on startup" permission that users can disable. On Android, if the app runs on startup, you have no way of disabling it. Even closing it through a task manger doesn't work. The daemon keeps bringing it back.

"Most OS's don't allow "headless" apps."

Well what about Unix (all flavors), Windows, MacOS (and even the aging BBOS7)?

I keep reading in these forums about how BB10/QNX is just like a desktop OS, so what happened to that?

So it's a stupid strategy now, but what about in 6 months when BB adds it to the OS? Will you be back saying that BB10 is better because it supports background processes and iOS and WP8 do not?

And how about these real-world capabilities that this feature gives to the end user, you would prefer to not be able to do these right?
1. Log GPS tracks in the background (MyTracks)
2. Share real-time GPS tracking (Glympse)
3. Location based reminders
4. VPN Proxy for bypassing country restrictions (Tunnelbear)
5. Your phone becomes a DLNA, DNS, Email, FTP, IRC, Proxy, SMB, SMS, SSH, Web, WebDAV, XMPP server (Servers Ultimate)
6. System wide ad blocker
7. Custom LED notifications (Light Flow)
8. Send a message when entering or leaving a geofence (Tasker)
9 Do some action when entering or leaving a Wifi access point (Tasker)
10 Location based settings (Llama)

I suppose if equivalent apps even exists (which is a different discussion altogether) , then these would be possible today as long as the App stays or forces itself to be in the top 8. But there would be no guarantee that as you go through your day, the app might get kicked out.

[Vijik]

This means that the shortcutme app that was just released has to take up an active frame... And then gets dumped if eight more apps are open? If true, this would be the most serious limitation of the OS I've heard so far.

And what's the basis for saying "yet"? Do we know true background apps are coming?

I also hope that headless and auto-start features become available to all 3rd party developers as those are useful features and open up for creating good utility apps.
Currently I can't port some of the features (scheduled shortcuts, macros showing time since last startup , etc) that ShortcutMe 6 had for BB OS.

At the same time I fully agree with InvalidUser0510 (last post in this page) that headless and auto-start apps could potentially be harmful and annoying, so a setting page for users to control/deny access to these features is a must.

FYI: ShortcutMe 10 doesn't need to run in active frame. It didn't run in background in BB OS either.
But it is NFC-enabled so that a tap to a NFC tag can launch a shortcut without the user needing to open ShortcutMe, find and then launch a shortcut. NFC allows to launch shortcuts without even needing ShortcutMe to run in Active Frame.
In addition it provides invocation Cards (viva BB 10), so that users can add shortcuts, create BB Home Screen shortcuts, make new icon images directly from other apps without needing to open ShortcutMe.

[jayrok1018]

As someone who recently came back to BB from Android, I'd like to see background apps/processes for a couple things:

1) Keep awake while plugged in (ie: GPS/music in car, device still goes to sleep after 5 mins) - could be an OS update/option?
2) Battery use/tracking - some sort of battery run time graph (see "battery use" in Android)
3) Data Usage / Tracking (not tracking what you're doing but just the amount of data being used...

These don't need a lot of resources, but if they needed to be in active frames then they're encroaching on the 8 "running" apps. Clearly some sort of running process manager would then be required, as background processes/headless apps could provide potential for misuse.

[peter9477]

As someone who recently came back to BB from Android, I'd like to see background apps/processes for a couple things:

1) Keep awake while plugged in (ie: GPS/music in car, device still goes to sleep after 5 mins) - could be an OS update/option?
2) Battery use/tracking - some sort of battery run time graph (see "battery use" in Android)
3) Data Usage / Tracking (not tracking what you're doing but just the amount of data being used...

These don't need a lot of resources, but if they needed to be in active frames then they're encroaching on the 8 "running" apps. Clearly some sort of running process manager would then be required, as background processes/headless apps could provide potential for misuse.

1. We can already do keep-awake without background services, so if an app that should do this doesn't, contact the developer.

2. Battery Guru will do this just fine, but unfortunately it's still waiting for approval. :-( As soon as we can do background services I'll of course adapt it to leverage that.

3. Even with background support unfortunately we can't do this because you still need an API to provide the data and BlackBerry hasn't provided devs with one.

Posted via CB10

[jayrok1018]

3. Even with background support unfortunately we can't do this because you still need an API to provide the data and BlackBerry hasn't provided devs with one.
Posted via CB10

api's available in AIR -->

NetworkStats - BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR - BlackBerry Developer
NetworkType - BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR - BlackBerry Developer
NetworkManager - BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR - BlackBerry Developer

With stay awake, if its sitting beside me plugged in/ on the desk, why is it going to sleep?

These should ideally be in the OS

[dannyd86]

Can't come soon enough. I had at least 8 basic apps running in the background on bbos7

Posted via CB10

[peter9477]

api's available in AIR -->

Interesting... thanks. If they have those in AIR, then the extension they wrote to support it must be using a supported (though possibly not documented) API in the NDK, so I guess it is doable.

With stay awake, if its sitting beside me plugged in/ on the desk, why is it going to sleep?

Keep-awake is even more limited in BB10 than it is on the PlayBook. It works for the app that enables it only as long as that app is full-screen. If you minimize it, whether back to the home screen, the Hub, or to go to another app, that app loses the ability to control keep-awake...

[jayrok1018]

That's precisely why I'm saying keep awake should be an option in settings. That would be the ideal route. I was really surprised to find the api for network tracking available air, yet no documentation anywhere in the native docs whatsoever... I'm sure support is in there somewhere though and in any likelihood to make network tracking work best (and eventually headless) it should be done 100% native.

Posted via CB10

[g2gcya]

Windows not running on micro kernel can also have background service, i believe its bbery who hasn't perfected the api for background service on qnx.

[AceRoom]

Any updates on this? I'm wondering on two grounds, as an aspiring developer as well as an end-user. The presence of headless apps has its advantages and disadvantages. I concur with many of the posters above, that it should be allowed but users should have complete control over which apps have this option. As an android user, I've come to realize Android can be at times inefficient. Even when you just HAVE a large number of apps installed, the phone can start to show signs of slow down. I really hope that Blackberry is able to deal with this well.

--
Edit:
I don't have a Z10 but I do have a playbook and I've noticed that some of the android apps tend to run in the background even when the main window is closed. Does this happen in BB10 as well? If it does, it kind of defeats the purpose of this entire concept of whether to allow headless apps.

[neilwick]

Support for headless apps will be included in BlackBerry 10.2 OS, due out in August in its final "gold" form.