iPad iOS Multitasking Kludgy; Inefficient

PCWorld’s Tony Bradley, on day 6 of his 30 days with an iPad series, says desktop operating systems have been multitasking in one way or another for decades, and in order for the iPad to fill the shoes of a notebook PC and act as the primary computing platform, it needs to be able to multitask as well. Apple’s implementation of multitasking in iOS is not full, or true multitasking, though, so it begs the question of whether it is truly up for the task, and noting that multitasking on the iPad is better than nothing, but nothing like using Windows 7, and while some of the issues he has will be fixed with iOS 5, the iPad still won’t be able to deliver a true multitasking experience to let him work more efficiently.

Bradley’s impressions square with my own in my fourth week of the iPad experience. The software multitasking switch in iOS 5 can’t come too soon, as like him, I’m concerned about wear-and-tear on the mechanical Home button under the current kludgy MT workaround of double-clicking.

However, there will still be no way to display two application windows simultaneously, or indeed in any other mode than full-screen. I’ve never liked full-screen mode on the Mac, and I’m no more enchanted with it on the iPad.

As Bradley observes, “multitasking” (so-called) on the iPad is too clunky and cumbersome to support an efficient workflow.