iOS App Switcher: Smartest Multitasking Concept Yet

It’s like waiting for an avalanche. The smartphone interface has been the same for a long time. I don’t mean ‘same’ in the real sense of the word, but there has not been much innovation around it. It’s pretty much the same incremental upgrades like what the iPhone has had lately. It’s time for something new to hit our attention, don’t you think? Well, even though we’re waiting for the big change, there are still incremental upgrades that are quite impressive. The App Switcher is one of those features.

Apple has an ability to make old features feel new with just a bit of bug fixing and tinkering. But they never seem to introduce those really optimized and useful features that will take smartphones to new levels of usefulness. That’s where the concept feature dubbed the App Switcher makes the big leap. It’s a multitasking feature that allows us to use our smartphones in a way previously not possible.

The processor in an iPhone (and in smartphones in general) are quite good these days. I mean, we see games that incorporate insane graphics and gameplay, so why couldn’t the user interface become a little bit…smarter? The App Switcher pushes the iPhone’s user interface to its limits. Judging from the video demo, this feature allows realtime multitasking with realtime previews as well. That is something that Apple seems to have struggled with for a long time. Personally, I don’t think the processor is the limiting factor in incorporating this kind of feature. It seems to come down to the battery in our smartphones. It simply drains too quickly to have multiple apps running in realtime in the background.

You will have to agree though that the App Switcher is a pretty neat concept feature that, as batteries get better, could come to optimize how we run apps on our smartphones. It is mentioned in the video that the average number of apps on an iPhone is 41. This means that with this feature we could optimize a whole lot of our app usage, but our battery life will be drained to nothing in a matter of minutes. So far this will remain a concept feature that every iPhone user will crave until it becomes a reality. App Switcher is conceptualized by designer Jesse Head.