Many people consider the lack of multi-tasking on the iPhone a “killer” blow. Over the past days even more people have said the same about the iPad. I have to disagree however, and as briefly as possible, here is why:
I believe multi-tasking is a myth, as the wonderful Merlin Mann would say. You can’t actually do more than one thing at a time. A computer can for sure, but right now of the 7 apps I have open, only one is doing anything - TextEdit. This is the case on the iPhone. While I can use multiple apps to accomplish a task, only one is in use at a time. If these apps launch spritely enough and have persistent state built-in then I don’t see the difference.
Of course there are times it does make a difference, such as wanting to run Pandora while surfing the web, but those times for me are limited. I’ll listen to my iPod app instead. Better still, I’ll have a 16GB iPhone 3GS full of music/Pandora/radio apps, and a 16GB iPad full of photos and movies. Problem solved.
Another common example is
twitter. I use
Tweetie on both the Mac and on the iPhone right now, and I am sure I will use it on the iPad also. When I am on the Mac, I like that it’s not intrusive - I can ignore the small blue icon if I wish to. Equally, on the iPhone I like that I can receive notifications of tweets I deem important (@ replies, DMs etc.) but I don’t get distracted with nonsense when I am working on something else - only when I am checking for it. There is a productive comfort in that mindset.
So in short, it’ not that I don’t want multi-tasking. I just want the machine to multi-task as well as I do, and no better*. It’s more enjoyable, more productive and ultimately a more simple and happy existence.
* Of course, by no better I mean unless it’s a workhorse rendering video in the background while I skive off on YouTube or something.
