iOS4 multitasking / background processing

Bumix

Member
Hello!

Is the new Pleco version for iOS4 capable of multitasking? If for example I start downloading a new dictionary and switch to another app, will the download finish in the background?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It's capable of basic, stay-loaded-in-the-background multitasking, but not currently of background downloads, and that's actually intentional - downloading add-ons sucks up most of your iPhone's bandwidth, and extracting / installing them most of its processor power / I/O speed, so we were worried that people would have a hard time doing other things they wanted to do with their iPhone when they exited Pleco while downloads were still running. Plus, background tasks are automatically killed after 10 minutes unless they're in one of a few specialized categories (podcasts, etc), so for long downloads you'd have to keep going back into Pleco to get them to finish.

But it does handle being put in the background gracefully - it suspends all downloads, makes sure the files are all written out to disk and their current download states saved - so that if you or the OS subsequently kill Pleco in the background (or even, say, turn off your phone) it'll still be able to resume them when you reopen.
 

dustpuppy

榜眼
I noticed Pleco does a pretty good job at keeping state and taking me back to wherever I was in the app. it makes it easy to switch back and forth between email and pleco (for instance if i'm typing an email in chinese).
 
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