| If you reread what I wrote, I acknowledged that it was a limited data set for the content of reviews. If I had been able to read more reviews, I would have done so. My main point (which I fear you missed) was that I cannot be violently wrong about the demand for background audio streaming, given that less than one percent of all iPhone OS device users who can use Pandora Radio have rated it. I find your attitude bizarre; Apple didn't "give in and [add]" copy/paste. They figured out the right UI/UX metaphors and added the feature when they had it right. Look at the problems that people have been complaining about with the usability of the Nexus One's copy/paste implementation. Apple will do the same with background applications when they get the UI/UX metaphors and the appropriate battery consumption issues dealt with appropriately. Your assessment of the ability to enable background audio streaming "without interfering with other apps or significantly harming battery life" is, well, wrong. If this were the case, I wouldn't experience periodic random slowdowns of my iPhone 3G (even in SpringBoard!) that appear to be related to when the radio is waking up and sending or receiving. Your assertion about the battery life is utter nonsense, since streaming audio requires an active data radio (which is a huge battery drain) and CPU activity. The CPU will be required to coordinate the data connection and decode the data from the network stream into an audio stream; if the data isn't in MP3 or AAC format on the network, the CPU will also be required to process the data into one of the supported formats. Remember that all iPhone OS devices have dedicated audio codec chips for processing MP3 and AAC audio. The radio, however, is going to be the key point on battery drain. I stopped using a hands-free Bluetooth headset (I now use a hands-free Bluetooth speaker in the car) because simply having the Bluetooth connection active drained my battery faster than anything else. I tried using my iPhone as a proximity token for my computer at work and found the exact same problem (and absolutely no data was being exchanged). At an OS level yes, it's trivial to schedule this. Above the kernel level, though, it's still pretty damned hard. Achievable, but Apple have shown themselves to be perfectionists, and if iPhone 4.0 is going to allow background audio streaming, it will be because they've figured out how to do it right (and it could easily include restrictions on the format of data being transferred). |
To clarify, I meant that little additional battery power would be consumed relative to what the user would experience if he'd just left the streaming app running in the foreground. This is not a valid reason not to support it. Let the user worry about the battery.