iPhone multitasking that works
Kinan Jarjous | Jan 18, 2010 | Comments 0
I’ve heard a countless times before from BlackBerry converts that one of the most irritating issues they face on the iPhone is the lack of multitasking support.
Personally, it pisses me off sometimes, barely restraining myself from throwing the iPhone across the room and watch the precious touch screen shatter into sexy little pieces. When I am composing a message, or on twitter, and I receive a phone call, every single app shuts down. It’s quite aggravating that the iPhone considers the “phone” functionality as an app by itself, one which you can actually restart through SBSettings on a Jailbroken iPhone if it ever gets stuck.
In any case, the dedicated community have previously released a nifty little tool called Backgrounder which you can install via Cydia on Jailbroken iPhones. True to their word, the apps kept running in the background after they were closed. However, with no interface and lots of Home button pressing – which I try to avoid – it was more of a nuisance than a convenience.
There are other apps that allow you to multi task, paid however, like Multiflow. This morning I happened upon a free app that does the job and does it well, and it’s called ProSwitcher.
Hop on to Cydia, Rock or Icy – whatever you fancy on your Jailbroken iPhone – and download Backgrounder. Once that’s done, look for ProSwitcher and download it too.
ProSwitcher runs on top of Backgrounder to provide a task switching GUI (graphical user interface). You can access the “task manager” through a variety of ways you can configure ProSwitcher with; I personally use the “double tap status bar” option. You can easily switch between apps, close apps (like you close web pages in iPhone Safari), and program which apps should always keep running by default, and make lists, etc.
Incredibly useful, especially on a 3GS where you have more memory, but even on my 3G I find it a fantastic tool that keeps at least my SMS app open (though I use QuickSend on top of that too).
Go ahead and try it and lemme know what you think.
Filed Under: iPhone
