A Losing Battle: Killing iPhone Apps

Stumbled upon a video from Greg over at AppleExplained with this good explainer about why it's unnecessary to kill iPhone apps from within the App Switcher. It's quick, concise, and Greg gets right to the point. The video itself is well done.

Not killing apps has a bunch of benefits:

  • Easy way to bring up a recently-used app
  • App resumes right where you left off
  • The app does not need to reload everything over again because it was left in a frozen state.
  • iOS manages all the power and memory without the need for a person to intervene

While I applaud Greg's efforts, I can tell from personal experience this is a losing battle. Killing apps is muscle memory at this point for most people. It's rare I see someone not closing out apps in the switcher. No matter how many people I tell or how many times I remind them there's no need to do this, they continue to do so.

Maybe Steve Jobs was right to be against an app switcher in the early iPhone days.