Response to Phone Dog's article on Windows 8 OS/Phones

[scottcraft]

I really don't care for the way WP does notifications, but if it was a dealbreaker for me I wouldn't be using WP right now. I don't think WP7 is perfect and WP8 won't be either, but their are no perfect platforms out there.

 

[feedmylittletroll]

I'm pretty sure that the resume times will be drastically reduced based on the multicore processors that's are now being put in WP8 devices. The notifications are what worry me the most. I love the iOS/Android drop down that lets me see everything that's going on but I doubt wp8 will have the drop down.

 

[luckyhillkop]

Where do you get this stuff Winterfang? It just isn't true. This is what is changing:

1) WP allows features to multitask (not entire apps), i.e. a feature Microsoft called "background music" allowed us to play music while simultaneously using other apps. Background file transfer was another such feature. For WP8 this will be expanded to features such as background location (navigation) and background VOIP.

2) Devices with more RAM (1GB instead of 512 MB) will allow us to fast-app-switch between more than just five apps.

Both of these concepts already exist in WP7, they've just been expanded upon in WP8. Multitasking in WP8 will be no more "true" than it was in WP7.

In general, WP8 apps will not multitask. Fast-app-switching is the closest WP will get to true multitasking (this is a deliberate design decision). Unfortunately, fast-app-switching isn't something the OS can automatically provide for each app. Instead, each app must support it explicitly, but this isn't mandatory for WP7. For WP8 I hope fast-app-switching support becomes mandatory. I don't know that it will be, but I am hopeful. This would also solve PhoneDog's (and many of our own) issues with lengthy application resume times, which WP can't solve on it's own if app developers aren't willing to do their part.

I'm not a WP user but I'm interested to get one soon. Right now I'm reading whatever I can on WP OS and the "multitasking" is something that I've been looking into. Thanks for your explanation there, been reading quite a bit on this and your explanation is the best I've read. Cheers.