The new iOS4 that most of you have on your iPhones and iPads finally allows you to run multiple applications at the same time. It’s really cool. When you press the Home button once to close an app, it actually remains in memory (or at least, a certain part of it does). If you double-tap the home icon, it will show you which apps are still “in memory”. Select any of those, and the app will immediately start, with no delay. This is great for apps like ours, which have to read data into memory and then perform updates and logic fist – because now there is no delay at all! Apple calls this “Switcher” and you can read about it here.
The downside is that if you have many apps still resident in memory, they may cause problems for each other. This is particularly true of apps that require a fair amount of memory or that have “lots going on” such as our Smart Apps – SmartTime, SmartPlans, SmartCal, SmartNotes and SmartPad. You see, Apple does not actually close down ANY of your apps when you press the Home button. It just puts “a portion” of then into memory (that “portion” is determined by the app developer). So as you open more and more apps, the amount of memory allocated to apps that you want to run, is decreased – even though the app that you are currently running is automatically allocated top priority for memory and computing resources.
Problem launching one of our apps?
If you have a problem launching one of our apps – or re-launching it after a “soft close” (home-button tap), it will definitely help to close down some of your other apps that are running in the background. Here’s how:
- “Soft Close” your app by tapping on the Home button once. This will bring you to the Home screen.
- Then, tap the Home button twice. You will see a tray that shows all of the apps that are resident in memory. You can scroll from left to right, to see more.
- Next, tap and hold any icon in the tray. They will start to “wiggle” and you will see the “delete” badge appear on the top left of each app icon.
- Press that “delete” badge for each app that you want to remove from memory. This is a “Hard Close.” Don’t worry, you are not deleting it from your iPhone. You are just closing it down.
- Press the Home button once to stop the ‘wiggling,’ then once again to get back to the Home screen.
- Start up your SmartApp.
This should fix most ‘crash’ or ‘cannot start up’ issues that you might be having.
