All I Want for (iPhone) Christmas Is App Switching
On Day 2 of running my iPhone 3GS jailbroken I ‘ve come round to thinking about what do I want most out of the jailbreak, and what I ‘m most ‘missing ‘ when running ‘stock ‘.
So far, more than anything I am enjoying the ability to switch between apps rapidly. I ‘m doing so via the mQuickDo application, which has taken some getting used to, but is a superb addition to my iPhone experience.
I ‘m also running the Backgrounder app, which I ‘d heard mentioned an awful lot and which (as the name suggests) lets you run applications in the background.
What I ‘m finding though is that it ‘s not so much the running in the background that is a great productivity boost for me, but much more the ability to switch quickly between apps. When I first thought about this, I doubted my own premise a little and thought about how much faster the switching would be “ between say Safari and Evernote (to paste in an interesting block of text from a web article) for example “ if Evernote was ‘backgrounding ‘, left running but minimized.
So I ‘ve done a little bit of testing on this. Trying out app switching with my favorite 3rd party apps active in the background, and then without that ability enabled (via Backgrounder). I ‘m finding that apps launch so quickly on the iPhone 3GS that the difference between switching to them when they ‘re backgrounding, and switching to them when they have to launch fresh, is very, very minimal “ almost not even noticeable.
I ‘ve only tested this out a little with a few favorite apps, and others ‘ mileage may well vary “ but I ‘m not currently seeing a huge benefit in leaving apps open in the background.
It ‘s the quick-switching that is the huge plus for me “ to jump easily from email to Things to record a new task, or from Safari to Evernote, or over to Twitterrific “ and all of these are super fast and responsive via mQuickDo, even when not running in the background.
I ‘d love to hear your thoughts on this one. How important are app-switching and background running to you? Which is the biggest help to you when running jailbroken?
Wich app let you put icons on lock screen?
That's mQuickDo, the one I mentioned in the post that lets you do the fast switching between apps, even straight from the Lock screen.
If you keep posting items like this I will be compelled to JB my phone as well. I am new to the iPhone, but jailbreaking seems to solve many of my frustrations. Thanks for the updates.
I'll definitely keep posting my thoughts and any interesting findings as I get myself used to jailbreak again for a bit and decide whether to stick with it.
Hey PJ, i'm using backgrounder as well, and thinking about giving mquickdo a try. I'm also using intelliscreen. So let me ask you, are the icons always on the lock screen, or do they require a swipe to make them appear? I don't want the info on my lock screen blocked by icons.
It reqires a swipe on its little bar. You can set where the bar goes and which types of swipe do which things. So no, the icons are not always on the screen.
Sent from my Speedy New iPhone
Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and give it a try. It looks pretty cool.
Cool. Hope you like it. It's not free – but you can trial it for a few days (3 I think).
Sent from my Speedy New iPhone
I watched the video that was in cydia before I downloaded. It seems that there's a trick. If u never activate and always just hit cancel, you can use it forever for free! When u open the actual app you will always get the 'do u want to activate' question, but u never have to do it and it doesn't interfere with it's actual operation! Nice
I like this app a fair bit – I feel happy paying for it, even knowing that I may or may not stick with the jailbreak. Feel like this dev has earned a donation regardless.
I heard that Jailbreak can effect Push Notifications, have you had any problems with that? I love the Push notificaitons, so this may be a deal breaker for me. Thank you for being the guinea pig, and great blog! Keep up the good work.
K
Not at all – I've tested push notifications from a new (ish) Twitter app that I'll review soon, and from Prowl, which sends me notifications from a few of my desktop apps. Both work just fine with the phone jailbroken. I believe it is only unlocked (or some unlocked) phones that have troubles with push. Thanks for the kind words about the site!
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