Comment by RankingMember
Comment by RankingMember 6 days ago
> There were lots of clever UX hacks to make this feel seamless - when an app was suspended it was also screenshotted, and the screenshot would be displayed to the user upon switching back, until the actual app could be restored and resume running.
I love this, such a classic hack
So classic they still use it! iOS now offers a lot more multitasking options, but for the most part when you swipe away from an app it's still good ol' Mr. Screenshot.
And if you'll excuse more nerding out - a lot of work is being done still to make this even more seamless. For example, iOS now heavily encourages the use of SwiftUI to define UIs, because rendering such UIs can be done by the OS outside of the app process.
This means you can have an actual live UI while the actual app process is suspended. They literally don't have to wake the process until you tap on a button.
It used to be that your app either got a full-time 60-120Hz runloop, or you got suspended completely. Now the OS can define a much more coarse-grained idea of "alive" without losing interactivity. It's super cool stuff.