Jenn of Pocketables.net pointed out today in a tweet that Apple is advertising the iPhone as a multitasking device. On the “Why you’ll love the iPhone” page, we see the following quote:
And since iPhone multitasks, you can make a phone call while emailing a photo or surfing the web over a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.
The way that they’ve worded it is indeed true. The iPhone can make calls and use a single application while doing so, however, Apple is pretty clearly playing with the concept of multitasking here, and almost seems to be trying to annoy critics who frequently cite the multitasking argument when talking about the iPhone. It is almost as if Apple is saying “Well technically…”
Apple/AT&T usually reserve the “ability to make calls and use the web at the same time” gambit for criticizing Verizon’s network, but here they’ve used it in a whole different light.
If the above scenario constitutes a multitasking phone, then just about everything, including the lights that are lighting the room in which I’m sitting, could claim to be able to multitask. The lights, of course, have the revered ability to “produce light and heat at the same time”, so yeah… the iPhone multitasks about as well as a light bulb. Even the earth has the impressive ability to not only rotate around the sun, but also revolve around it’s axis at the same time.
OK, I realize that lots of tech bloggers are upset because the iPad isn’t everything they wanted, but let’s stop being disingenuous here. The iPortable devices *do* multitask. Surfing the web or emailing a photo while holding a phone call open requires performing two tasks at once. So does playing music while websurfing or emailing, which these devices also do. What you want, and what iPortable devices do *not* have, is unlimited 3rd-party background tasking, so that you can run your Pandora app while you’re websurfing. (That’s not the only possible use case, but it seems to be the one everyone cites.) If you want to complain about that lack, fine, but overreaching it just makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Well, it’s then fair to say, that iPhone is capable of running in a concurrent environment all its three components simultaneously: cell phone, music player and pocket pc. However, the pocket pc component is not multitasking at all.