Hour 22. Building Background-Aware Applications

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

• How iOS supports background tasks

• What types of background tasks are supported

• How to disable backgrounding

• How to suspend applications

• How to execute code in the background

“Real multitasking” claims the commercial for a competitor’s tablet. “Unlike Apple, you can run multiple things at once,” chides another ad. As a developer and a fan of iOS, I’ve found these threads amusing in their naiveté and somewhat confusing. iDevices have always run multiple applications simultaneously in the background, but they were limited to Apple’s applications. This restriction has been to preserve the user experience of the device instead of letting it bog down to the point of being unusable. Rather than an “anything goes” approach, Apple has taken steps to ensure that iOS devices remain responsive at all times.