There's no argument that an app with infinite background privileges is incapable of getting itself into a 99% CPU eating infinite loop, but that's perfectly compatible with the very accurate technical over-view of the situation given by this article and does nothing to support ghshephard's weird insinuations that the article is merely a "theory" and that iOS "in reality" behaves differently than described.
All those apps in the multitasking bar on your iOS device are currently active and slowing it down, filling the device's memory or using up your battery. To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong."
I am saying that in order to maximize performance and battery life you should kill all those apps in the multitasking bar manually. Or reboot your iPhone.
Anybody who complains about very bad battery life, this is the _first_ advice I give to them, and 95% of the time, it fixes all their problems. Note that very-bad battery life is defined by a battery-life measured in a few hours, and is different from the suboptimal battery life that can be remedied by double checking your bluetooth, 3G, wireless, etc... settings. It is poor battery life that can't easily be explained by user behavior.
> I am saying that in order to maximize performance and battery life you should kill all those apps in the multitasking bar manually.
Again. You are wrong. That is not a multitasking bar. Most of those apps are consuming no CPU and no memory. They are simply apps that you had, at some point previously, run. This is only solving your problem because, in the midst of superstitiously clearing out this stuff, you're stumbling across the app that is misbehaving and signalling to the app that you're done with it, at which point it kills off its own misbehaving background thread.
You're doing the equivalent of throwing out all of the food in your house when the milk goes bad; it works to eliminate the problematic food-item only by coincidence, and not for whatever magical-thinking reasons you happen to hold.
I don't get it, are you misunderstanding intentionally so you can smugly accuse people of magical thinking? The 'theory' is that closing all the apps is a no-op. It doesn't matter that most of the article is correct, that everything it describes about mechanisms is accurate. The thesis is not properly supported by the facts.
ghshephard is not some fool performing rituals to cleanse his phone. The milk has gone bad but all the other food is useless suspended junk anyway, so it's simple to throw it all out. Yes it's overkill but it works.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that because someone is acting in overkill that they believe overkill is the only valid path. It may just be the simplest.
> I don't get it, are you misunderstanding intentionally so you can smugly accuse people of magical thinking?
I don't get it. In what sense of the word theory is an exact regurgitation of the official documentation of all and only those behaviors of a process's lifecycle a "theory"?
The great-to-the-nth-grandparent was clearly trying to discredit a factual explanation of the situation by referring to it as a theory, because said facts contradicted his anecdotal misunderstanding of the OS's operation.
Anecdotes trumping facts, and cargo cult behavior engaged in because it coincidentally produces a result are the definition of magical thinking.
The n-grandparent was not trying to discredit the facts of the article. He was discrediting the thesis that it is useless to close all applications.
The facts of the article were correct.
The thesis of the article was not correct.
The facts listed in the article said that some applications are able to run in the background.
Some application is causing battery loss. Not 'all of them', like people who are actually mistaken think, but some, like people who know the facts think.
I don't know how to explain it in a clearer way. The n-grandparent is not a cargo-culted ignorant who thinks there is a need to kill all the apps. He has one or two apps that are abusing background permission, but doesn't know which one or two. There is no 'anecdotal misunderstanding'.
You yourself agreed that the concept of a broken background app can coexist with the facts of the article. But you are conflating the thesis, the theory, with the facts. They are not one and the same. Insulting the thesis is not an attempt at discrediting the actual facts.
I apologize for ranting but redundancy can sometimes help make a point clear.
"you're stumbling across the app that is misbehaving and signalling to the app that you're done with it, at which point it kills off its own misbehaving background thread."
Yes - this most likely is precisely what I'm doing. And it works. Consistently.
I'm not sure whether you are upset that (A) I have an iPhone in which shutting down all the apps on the Multitasking/MRU/Task Switcher bar fixes its battery/CPU problems or (B) that I disagree with Speir's when he states that "To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually." is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I suspect that it's mostly (B) - I hope you'll grant me my own observation of (A).
I actually agree with 95% of your last statement - particularly the part about throwing out all of the food in the house when the milk goes bad - but I don't really have an option - no (easy) way to figure out which app is sucking all the battery.
The "Magical Thinking" statement was a bit over the top though. I think we can avoid the ad-hominen on HN and keep the discourse at a higher level.
