{"id":2662,"date":"2010-08-03T16:46:21","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T20:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2014-02-20T22:14:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T03:14:04","slug":"ios-background-app-kludge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/03\/ios-background-app-kludge\/","title":{"rendered":"iOS Background App Kludge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>iOS 4 includes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/150488\/2010\/04\/iphone4_features.html\">seven multitasking services<\/a>, but none of them are conducive to running a utility service in the background. An application can run in the background to get updates from the GPS, but Apple won&rsquo;t allow it to run in the background to get updates from IM, Twitter, or a mail server. (Apple&rsquo;s own Mail app is exempt from this rule, of course.)<\/p>\r\n<p>The developers of <a href=\"http:\/\/tapbots.com\/pastebot\">Pastebot<\/a> wanted to run their app in the background to listen for updates from their companion Mac utility. Their <a href=\"http:\/\/tapbots.com\/blog\/pastebot\/pastebot-music-in-background\">solution<\/a> is to use the multitasking service that lets apps play music in the background (via <a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2010\/08\/03\/pastebot-background\">John Gruber<\/a>). They thoughtfully included a silent audio clip so that this <a href=\"http:\/\/appreview.tumblr.com\/post\/899470526\/cannot-use-background-audio-multitasking-to-perform\">kludge<\/a> would be invisible to the user and not drain the battery. Apple rejected the app, saying that the music must be audible.<\/p>\r\n<p>So, instead, you must create or <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/2100-1041_3-5154202.html\">buy<\/a> a silent audio clip, put it in iTunes, sync it to your iPhone, and select it in Pastebot&rsquo;s settings, all to work around Apple&rsquo;s decision to forbid normal background processing. This makes the app more difficult to use and wastes the time of both the developers and the users.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iOS 4 includes seven multitasking services, but none of them are conducive to running a utility service in the background. An application can run in the background to get updates from the GPS, but Apple won&rsquo;t allow it to run in the background to get updates from IM, Twitter, or a mail server. (Apple&rsquo;s own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,773,772,774,71],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ios","tag-ios-4","tag-ios-multitasking","tag-pastebot","tag-programming"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8460,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/8460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}