oh and btw wayland now accepted as part of MeeGo 1.3
https://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18558

I've seen the "multitasking" at android. And it's a joke. I used a Nokia N95 before and it was great compared to android.

I preordered the N900 in the moment I saw the multitasking abilities. And now I must say I would order 5 more if MeeGo weren't because no other except WebOS could give me what I want.

I copy very often text from one application to a other, check my mails while a youtube video is caching, listen to audio podcasts while reading at this forum. For me there is never a way back to this single task freezing mobile OS systems.

The most time a application waits for user intraction. So they doesn't eat much resources except RAM. And if they have to use the CPU they have something to do. Because of this I've started the application. I don't want to wait until a application has finished their task. I would like to do something different in the meantime with my device.

The only thing I hate at my N900 is the MediaPlayer. I'm unable to keep a Video running in the background. (keep only the Audio running would be fine for me) And I don't understand the need to have Audio and Video at the same Application.

When I listen to Musik and I wan't to pause and have a short look at a Video I have to tap several times the back button, select Video, play the file and after it I have to find and select my music again.
This is crap and feels like Android! I hope at MeeGo they have understood why the N900 is such a great Mobile Device...

This looks really good, but from my own point-of-view, it looks more appropriate for desktop/laptops, not really tablets/netbook. Makes more of a "windows" style. Maybe I'm wrong...

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/screenshots.html

While i don't want to turn this in to MeeGo San Francisco Conference () i don't get what where they thinking with that Android multitasking.
I could only create as bad multitasking if i deliberately wanted to do it bad.
Why it sucks is that from the start Android is definitely the OS i want to use(and have used on GS for 6 months), but because i use multitasking so heavily i rather use ios.

dont know you might be right, we should find out after October i guess

For x86 only it appears...

I know that some wanted to include Wayland in 1.3, but only because I was at MeeGo conference. The bug was just got opened yesterday. Is this what people mean when they criticize MeeGo openness and decisions are closed? The votes on bugs.meego.com don't determine the decisions I take it.

In order to end this discussion multi-task versus rapidly switched application, let me point that for the mobile platform the most important thing is battery life.

You can have really good device, with extreme performance, but If you have to recharge it once a day it is worthless.

Multitasking allows running of multiple applications and that is fine and convenient.

The problem is that multiple application running at the same time can eat up battery (by forcing CPU to higher-power states). You have to understand that average user does not handle the concept of multitasking very well. Most people will have desktop-like assumptions, and this will lead to discharged battery very soon.

In reality it is easier to simple remove multitasking since less people will complain about short battery life.

Introduction of multitasking requires special caution, both in OS scheduler design and applications themselves (just imaging burping application running at 100% CPU time in the background).

Just a tad teensy weensy bit off topic, but do you think that Nokia will market the new device ala N8 pink? http://tinyurl.com/3upjqkj

Screenshoots says nothing about what waylland is about

I see wayland as important cause X11 is a very bloated on embedded devices. With wayland you talk direct with the GPU.

however on desktop side wayland is only supported by Intel GFX. But not closed source drivers for nvidia/ati. and the open drivers are still unstable imho.

On the arm platform gfxdrver question is will n900de have support for this? and the upcoming device?

I Really hopes.so...

There are two ways to do multi-tasking well on a mobile device:

1) Like most current phones, suspend background applications and allow only specific background tasks (downloading data, playing audio, etc).

2) Keep all open apps in memory, but limit background apps to only tax the cpu when absolutely necessary.

Both differ very little actually on battery drain. It may even require more energy to constantly suspend and restart applications. The disadvantage of the latter is more the increased memory demands, which makes it more important to close or kill apps frequently. Less so, if the device just so happens to be stacked with massive amounts of ram...

Another disadvantage of course is, that bad apps can cause more harm to the battery while there are in the background.