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Sand boxing and background apps on IOS

I use lots of Apple products, and I use lots of apps on those Apple products. Several of those apps require syncing or regular downloads to be useful, such as:

  • Evernote
  • Omnifocus
  • Newsstand
  • Textexpander
  • Downcast
  • Feeddler Pro
  • Pocket
  • 1Password
  • Tweetbot

I also use a Wi-Fi only IPad.

 

One of the largest annoyances I have is when I open an App, e.g. Evernote and I have to then wait whilst it syncs every change since the last time I opened it, in a lot of cases, I can't use the app until it's finished and I may have forgotten what I was going to do.

Even worse, I'm offline and the note I want isn't available to me when I need it.

Yes, I could set up a routine to open each app every morning on all three of my devices and allow them to sync, but why don't more apps include options to sync on geolocation.

My ideal would be that Apple allowed developers to build hourly syncing into their apps, but with this background sync having to have a mandatory switch for users which is defaulted to Wi-Fi only and being limited to 5 Minutes.

A second option would be to allow apps to do the above once daily. So as I wake at 06:00, I may set that to be 05:30.

Downcast have put together some work arounds which are really good around geofencing and hourly updates.

This would remove a real headache from IOS use for me.

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