During the discussions about the multitasking limitations in the iOS, some of you may have forgotten that the original Mac didn’t multitask. You ran one application, did your thing, and opened another application to do another thing. But Apple cobbled together something called MultiFinder to answer the call; there were third-party alternatives as well.

Yes, MultiFinder would exacerbate the Mac OS’s tendency to crash, but it was good enough to get the job done. With the arrival of Mac OS 7, MultiFinder was rolled more seamlessly into the Mac OS, so you didn’t have to first set it up manually. With OS X, based on a traditionally multitasking system, Unix, there were no more worries. And for those who think OS X could be more stable, you might be right, but things are a whole lot better than they used to be.

Now even before Apple added limited multitasking support to the iOS, which uses the same fundamentals as OS X, it could multitask. How else could you take a phone call, and check your email at the same time, assuming you were on a wireless carrier that supported the feature? But Apple made it difficult for third parties, since they didn’t want to degrade the user experience. No I don’t think it was a conspiracy to restrict the functionality of those apps, but that isn’t on the radar with the folks at Google, who continue to tout the multitasking features of Android.

Today’s implementation of iOS multitasking answers most needs. True, there are some background tasks you’d like to see run simultaneously, and as the iPhone and iPad gain more powerful processors and memory, you would assume Apple can give you more multitasking features and still keep performance at a high level.

But there is one thing that the iOS still doesn’t let you do, and that’s have two apps active at the same time. When you switch from one app to another, other than possible supported background tasks, the app you left goes into a sort of idle mode or suspend mode. It’s there for instant reuse, but little more.

That approach makes sense on a 3.5-inch or 4-inch iPhone screen. It makes far less sense on the 7.85 and 9.7 iPad displays. Remember that the original multitasking compact Mac had a 9-inch monochrome screen with 512×342 pixel resolution. Handling multiple apps and multiple documents was an exercise in careful screen management, particularly scrolling and window movement, but it was possible. So you’d think that Apple could and should make it happen on the iPad.

Today’s Android device seems to handle multiple apps well enough for most users, since the hardware is more powerful. So perhaps it’s time for Apple to realize that more and more people use the iPad for something more than email, Web surfing and game playing. There are real productivity apps, such as the iWork suite of Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Apple continues to add features to bring them closer to the desktop versions. There are even rumors that Microsoft is developing a version of Office to work on the iOS. After all, they tamed it, more or less, for the Surface RT tablet, so why not?

I can see, for example, a way to have a tiny thumbnail showing the open documents in a single app, and it should be easier than double-clicking Home to bring up a list of “idle” apps. But I wouldn’t presume to represent myself as an interface designer. That’s above my pay level, so I’d rather just lobby for the concept, and let Jonathan Ive and the rest of the crew develop the proper interface to make it easy and seamless.

Yes, I understand that Apple doesn’t add features just because someone else has them, and I realize that many of you wouldn’t tolerate a degraded user experience just to get a feature that seems essential. To me, the ability to open multiple documents and instantly switch from one open app to another is essential if you expect to use an iPad for business-oriented chores. It shouldn’t be a one-at-a-time gadget. It’s not as if Apple’s competitors are standing still, and they will continue to boast about every single feature they have that the iOS lacks, whether it works well or not.

I recall, for example, a noisy TV ad for the failed BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. While doing one task, it demonstrated how a movie trailer conveniently played back in another window. It’s not that I couldn’t live without the intrusion of an ad for a movie when I’m otherwise occupied, but RIM managed the task with a clearly inferior OS.

I suppose some of you can go through your personal multitasking wish list and come up with other changes you really want Apple to act on. But consider that Apple had pretty decent multitasking on a personal computer that, nowadays, we’d regard as extremely primitive. But it worked well enough, so I’m sure Apple is perfectly capable of coming up a superior multitasking scheme for iOS 7.

Assuming they’re listening to us, of course.

Some members of the press seem to believe, or want to believe, that Apple’s ascendency is coming to an abrupt halt this holiday season, despite the lack of any evidence that any serious problems exist. I suppose it all began in October, when Mapgate erupted on the heels of the release of a bug-ridden Maps for iOS 6. From here, the hits (or was it misses?) just kept on coming, and it’s now perceived that Apple is in serious trouble. That is, unless you take a look at the reality of the situation.

I suppose Mapgate was very much overblown, since all navigation apps are imperfect. I can cite chapter and verse, but will just give the most recent Google Maps example, when it attempted to route me to a local utility’s payment center. A quick glance at the directions, acquired from the site and not the iOS app, showed extra turns that were totally unnecessary. Knowing the area fairly well, I was able to reduce eight turns to five, and probably saved a few minutes of travel time in the process. But at least the directions were correct in terms of accuracy. I can’t say the same thing with that recent Google Maps effort to take me to a health food store, putting me a couple of miles short of my destination.

But Apple over-promised and under-delivered with their version of Maps, which is very much the reverse of the usual situation. It was also easy to post screen shots of the most egregious errors in all the wrong places, so the problems that might have otherwise gotten a few complaints here and there became viral. All right, some of the 3D imaging was bizarre, and when bridges and highways seem to be melting, you have a right to be concerned. At the end of the day, it’s about accuracy, and Apple did somewhat worse than the so-called standard-bearer, Google. Thus the decision to remove Google from its default spot in Maps was perceived to be the wrong idea.

It does appear the media rejoiced in exposing Apple’s glass house. Minor errors became major, not that there weren’t some really bad ones, such as a certain set of directions in Australia that would leave you stranded in the wilderness, and attracted the attention of the authorities. That the data came from the government’s own resources got buried in the text.

But at least Apple apologized, and Tim Cook dismissed the executives allegedly responsible for this monumental screw-up. Over the past few weeks, some of those maps irritants were vanquished.

As you might expect, when Google Maps for iOS debuted with millions of downloads, the clear advantages over Apple Maps became front and center. But I never saw a single mention of the fact that my first navigation attempt was greeted with a beta prompt that I had to accept to move on. The voice directions are brief, not very descriptive, and, at least with a Honda’s HandsFree system, would connect, disconnect, and reconnect again for a single set of instructions, punctuated by beeps before, between and after. The beeps are a feature of HandsFree, but the multiple connections are just too much. Since there are hundreds of thousands of Hondas equipped with Bluetooth, I am surprised this curious defect isn’t being mentioned either. At least Apple Maps, with Siri, doesn’t take over my car’s audio system. The audio from an iPhone or iPad at full volume is more than enough to get the message across.

Through it all, Apple’s stock price has fallen briskly from a peak of over $700 a share, but not, apparently, with any logical cause.

Take the introduction of the iPhone 5 in China. There were few lines, so the media assumed sales were tepid, or, to use Steve Ballmer’s description of Surface sales, modest. But Apple provided a real dose of reality with the announcement that some two million iPhones were sold in China during the first weekend. You see, they had an online reservation system, so customers only had to go to a dealer to pick up the product they already ordered. That reduced waiting time, and assured customers they’d get the model they wanted.

Assumptions, assumptions!

There were also those reports, not officially confirmed, that Apple had cut back on component orders. Of course, sales are apt to be less in the first quarter of a new year, so you would expect that Apple would need fewer parts. But reality checks don’t get in the way of fantasies. I think a Ouija Board would do better.

So how well did Apple do? Well, that won’t be known until the latter part of January, except for surveys. The early ones indicate that the iPad mini is going better than expected, and more would have been sold had Apple not been backordered. Oh yes, there’s that conspiracy theory that Apple holds back production deliberately to make it look as if a product is in high demand, though the logic behind giving up sales doesn’t register on the sanity scale. We know that Apple won’t begin to catch up on iMac demand until January, if then, so sales of desktop Macs are bound to be subdued. But it’s possible the still-high demand for MacBooks Airs and MacBook Pros will compensate.

Sure, I suppose Apple could still miss their own or Wall Street’s expectations for this quarter. But there’s not a lick of evidence of any such possibility, though that won’t stop people from just making things up.

All right, Apple’s vision of the personal computer is that of an appliance. This is one key reason, for example, why upgrade options are usually very limited. Turn it on, use it, turn it off. You needn’t worry about what goes on inside, although that’s not the way PCs have traditionally been designed.

Of course, with a TV set, or a toaster oven, you don’t concern yourself about upgrading operating systems, or what features the former might contain. True, a TV may on a rare occasion require some sort of firmware update, usually delivered online or via a USB connection of some sort, but the issues fixed are about reliability, not flashy features and interface refinements. It’s an appliance after all.

With more and more Macs, the same appliance mentality applies. On some models, you can’t even upgrade RAM, in the tradition of the original Mac back in 1984. You get what you get and live with it, unless you’re skilled at component level hacking and want to take a chance that what you do will void the warranty, and maybe turn your Mac into a brick.

Continue Reading…

One of the major arguments against Apple and the iOS is choice. Apple expects you to exist within a walled garden, and your freedoms are supposedly restricted. So, for example, you can’t get apps from anywhere but the App Store unless you take the risk of jailbreaking your iOS gadget.

The argument in favor of Apple’s carefully curated environment is high safety from malware, and at least the basic assurance that the app you download, and often pay for, will meet basic standards of functionality. It doesn’t guarantee that the app is any good, but there are always reviews from other users, so you can get a basic idea of the good points, and the not-so-good points.

But some of you would prefer to acquire apps that Apple won’t approve. I understand the reasoning, though I haven’t run into any personal situations of needs and desires that weren’t filled with Apple’s offerings. After all, the App Store offers a rich selection. There are well over 700,000 titles available as I write this, with several hundred thousand optimized for the iPad and the iPad mini. Even better, you have multiple choices in most categories.

So consider Maps. Yes, I realize it had a troubled release, though I don’t regard it quite as dangerous as some, even if some people in Australia were stranded in a wilderness because they believed Apple could do no wrong. I wouldn’t grant that capability to any mapping app, even Google’s. Besides, the errant data supposedly came from the Australian government, and, just days later, police in another Australian city warned users about Google Maps because of erroneous instructions. If the so-called best navigation app on the planet isn’t perfect, maybe we expect too much of Apple.

But you still have choices. In addition to Apple and Google, there’s AOL’s Mapquest and a number of others, including some that carry a price tag. You can also go online in Safari for still more selections. In this case, Apple’s walled garden hasn’t restricted you in a meaningful way. Indeed, when he delivered an apology for the shortcomings of Maps, CEO Tim Cook said look elsewhere until Apple has the chance to fix the most serious problems.

In passing, I also wonder why I have yet to read a review of Google Maps for iOS that mentions the beta warning I observed when I configured my first turn-by-turn navigation to a nearby restaurant. But most everything at Google exists in extended beta, sometimes for years, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it’s also a warning not to expect perfection. Would that Apple had done the same thing with Maps; they still list Siri as a beta, by the way.

When he comes to book reading, again Apple doesn’t restrict you. If you don’t like the selection in iBooks, go ahead and download the software from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, and other services. You can become a customer for any of these companies, or all of them, and they won’t refuse your business.

Here’s are real examples of a walled garden: If you buy a Barnes & Noble Nook or a Kindle of some sort, these companies don’t make it easy for you to acquire digital books from other companies. That’s because you’re paying a lower price with the expectation that you’ll buy products and services to make up the difference. So these tablets, or book readers, are sold as loss leaders, almost in the same fashion as a printer, which may be quite affordable. Well, at least until you use up the ink and have to buy more.

Indeed, I’ve known a few people here and there who constantly buy new printers, figuring it’s cheaper to use the thing with the supplied consumables until spent, and recycle the old printer after it’s replaced. It may seem wasteful, but that’s the consequence of the printer maker’s marketing scheme. Still, this extreme example usually only applies to the really cheap models.

Now I suppose there are some legitimate arguments you can make about the set up of the Mac App Store. All right, OS X users don’t have to necessarily buy their apps from that source, although an increasing number of titles are no longer available separately. But the key tool to make apps safer, sandboxing, can restrict choice. Some features have to be changed or removed from an app because Apple won’t allow them. Or the app won’t be approved.

Consider, for example, the apps I use to capture audio for my radio shows. This process requires accessing system capabilities that apparently conflict with sandboxing.

But there are other problems, and these apply to the iOS as well. There are no demo versions of apps, say time limited so you can pay for them after using them for a while. This is the tried and true method of selling apps on many platforms, but Apple hasn’t allowed it to happen in their software repositories. There’s also no way to get a major upgrade for an app at a discount. If the developer wants payment, they have to build an all new version. Existing customers are in Apple’s database, not theirs, and there’s no way to give existing customers a break.

At least on the Mac, you can still buy your software elsewhere, at least most of the time, so you aren’t saddled with those restrictions. But maybe Apple will get the message and fix things before third-party software resources vanish.

All in all, however, Apple’s walled garden doesn’t really hurt my day-to-day existence. I’d think living in the Amazon or Barnes & Noble walled garden would be a whole lot more restrictive.