king talk

Multitasking UIs in webOS (left) and iOS 4

So, the iOS has joined the multitasking party. Expectations were pretty high, given that Apple has taken a lot of time to deliver this feature and Palm (now HP) has already brought a great take on multitasking to the market with their webOS.

Perhaps it is my experience with webOS that makes the iOS multitasking feel so awkward to me. An I am not talking about the fact that only certain services (like data, location or audio) can run in the background. I am talking about the interface and the user experience – usually fields where Apple is extremely strong.

But this time I am disappointed and I don’t even know what exactly is wrong. With webOS, I instantly had a coherent mental model that was properly represented by the interface. Open apps were windows, when I throw an app away, it is closed and the process will stop.

In iOS, there is no simple way to completely close an app. EVERYTHING ends up as an open app in the app tray when the home button is pressed – even applications that do not have multitasking capabilities and therefore don’t even maintain state. This is especially annoying because it breaks the trust of the user. Also, it completely clutters the little tray.

Even worse, the process of removing a »running« app is very complicated. It involves double-pressing the home button (which potentially kicks you out of your app if you do it too slow), then performing a long press on an icon (artificially slowing down the user) and then tapping the little close icon (which is a quite small target).

Again, the comparison helps. In webOS, you are performing the same gesture two times: swipe up from the gesture area to go to the application switcher and then swipe up the app card to throw it away. Sure, this gesture has to be learned, but so does the interaction that Apple uses.

Wired also has a comparison of mobile multitasking. They take a look at Android as well.