Multitasking Pandora Question

[Shlov1]

OK, so now Pandora can play in the background, but here is my questions. When I am playing Pandora and I want to close it, it continues to play in the background. I can not "close" it unless I open up the new multitask dock hold it down and then close it from there. But if I do that and then later if I am doing something else and want to go to Pandora it is no longer in the dock. I am concerned about just hitting pause and letting it go since won't it continue streaming and burn up my battery? Any answers are much appreciated. I miss just using my jailbroken 3gs and using proswitcher.

 

[jakej914]

Unfortunately, the answer is yes, you have to manually "delete" the app from the dock to fully close it. I'm not the biggest fan of this method of multitasking. However, I don't know how your results have been, but I have had excellent battery life. At one point, I realized Pandora had actually been paused in the background with no significant drain on the battery. It really just depends on your usage.

 

[ghostface147]

Hmm, that is true. There is no real way to close an app except manually. I was playing angry birds, yes I am new to the game and it's awesome, and don't like it sitting paused on my dock. I know it's just idle, but there needs to be a way to tell it no, end task as requested without going through the manual process.

Pandora is in the same box. Get it?

 

[macharborguy]

Hmm, that is true. There is no real way to close an app except manually. I was playing angry birds, yes I am new to the game and it's awesome, and don't like it sitting paused on my dock. I know it's just idle, but there needs to be a way to tell it no, end task as requested without going through the manual process.

Pandora is in the same box. Get it?

it's not in idle (angry birds), it's not anything. The state gets saved, and the app is closed. It is the same as creating a Game Freeze in a MAME emulator. You create the freeze, quit the game and emulator, come back to it later, and it restores from the freeze state.


as far as Pandora, the only time it is "streaming" is when it is downloading the audio file to play. I have an FM Transmitter in my car and notice when a new song comes up in Pandora, I hear the GSM noise in my speakers for a little while, but about 1/4th of the way thru the song (I am on Edge), I stop hearing it, which tells me that the song is downloaded much like an MP3. It will only start downloading the next song WHEN the next song comes up, and not before (because your choice of thumbs up or down could change the next song as well).


and as for apps that support background "local notifications", I would assume that these are done much the same as CRON jobs on any other UNIX machine, where a text file contains an instruction that should fire at a specific time.

 

[ghostface147]

as far as Pandora, the only time it is "streaming" is when it is downloading the audio file to play. I have an FM Transmitter in my car and notice when a new song comes up in Pandora, I hear the GSM noise in my speakers for a little while, but about 1/4th of the way thru the song (I am on Edge), I stop hearing it, which tells me that the song is downloaded much like an MP3. It will only start downloading the next song WHEN the next song comes up, and not before (because your choice of thumbs up or down could change the next song as well).

Well perhaps idle wasn't the right term, but you got what I was saying. Either way, there needs to be a way to fully exit a program if you want to without having to end the task manually in the dock. 3 years and Apple still can't get things right.

 

[Jeff Kirvin#IM]

You still don't get it. When you exit an app that isn't doing anything via the background API, you DO fully exit the program. Pandora not playing music isn't running at all. Period. A game paused isn't running at all. Period. All you see in the tray is icons no different than on the springboard in the order most recently used. They are no more running than every single app on your home screen is running.

 

[neilmix]

Hi, I'm the developer of Pandora Radio for iPhone. I can confirm that as long as Pandora is paused in the background, iOS will suspend the process and guarantee it has no impact on battery life or system performance. No need to kill the app, just pause it and go on to other things. Hope this helps clarify.

 

[OTACORB]

I've posted this before but I will post it once again. It explains Multitasking in detail. You guys worrying about closing these things are doing so unnecessarily provided that the app is iOS4 tested and compatible Many of them still aren't, so those you have to be careful with.

Good Read, Check it out: iPhone OS 4 multitasking explained, again | When Will Apple?