iPhone and iPod Touch Application Shortsightedness - Here's a "Common Sense" Suggestion

Tamar, I totally agree!

Agree!

Where do I begin with all the things *I* hate about my iPhone and you've hit one of the main ones SQUARELY on the head. The further one digs into the use of the iPhone, the more one sees it is a badly thought out device - so much of it is utterly cack-handed. I hate mine so so much! Were it not for the 18 month contract I'm tied into..... pah!

I agree

I hate that when I get an email (I don't play games) my music dims. I get a LOT of emails.

So here's my question: is Apple actually listening?

Well, this isn't really an official Apple support forum. It's more of a community effort with 13 Apple employees (of various levels in the company) that stop by every now and then.

So, Apple probably isn't listening to this thread specifically, but the community is listening, and Apple tends to listen to their community. So, we just have to be "louder" and make our feature requests heard in more places than just here.

Regarding communicating directly with Apple, there is an iPhone feedback form here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone....

Unfortunately, they "cannot accept unsolicited advice", which is kind of what a feedback form such as this is for, so I have no clue if they actually read it or if it's just for show.

Ultimately, we can make a bigger impact by making our feature requests heard by as many ears as possible. Eventually, they'll be heard by the right person and possibly implemented.

Tamar, I don't think it is a question of Apple listening as much as this not being something that can be done with the current OS.
Although I don't know much about technology, my feeling is that the "sound app" is accessed by all applications on the system. The OS is probably set to release the sound system to whatever other app requires it. That means that while you are playing a game, or using another application that uses sound, that application will have priority over all others in accessing the sound. To get back to the sound, you would need to make the application using it, the mp3 player application for instance, gain priority again.
All that is happening is that you are only able to get one process to access the sound application at a time. I don't believe this will change. No matter how much you loose your cool and swear at Apple.
Although impractical for all intents and purposes, I did read somewhere that a user bought several ipods and used them for different music types. This is overkill as you can store incredible amounts of files on these players but it worked for this person. So, in your case, you may want to consider investing on a smaller ipod and have it around so that you can play mp3s when you are playing games on the main unit.
I know, this defeats the purpose of having a unit that multitasks but until you get one that does, this is the cleanest way around it.
Good luck in your quest.

I agree! I bought the iPod Touch because I want a MUSIC PLAYER but was pulled in because of all of the apps. If I knew, beforehand, that I couldn't multi task then I would have bought another 180GB classic! I LOVED my last classic and accidently cracked the screen. The iTouch has insufficient memory for my music collection but I bought into the bells and whistles of the new technology.

HEY APPLE!!! FIX THIS OS ISSUE!!! I'm not one to typically badmouth an Apple product but I'm telling my friends about this problem. At least 10 have said they'll wait to buy until it's resolved (two have purchased other, non Apple, products). HURRY UP... you're losing market share because of this issue!!!

Okay, seriously - I thought the 3.0 update would fix this, but it didn't. Does Apple not care? t's very upsetting that something that would be so simple is proving to be so difficult since I have to email individual apps owners to tell them to offer a mute setting in their games. Apple's OS should override these settings to avoid the hard work required on my part (and on app developers' parts since they have to reprogram their apps).

This might help:
1) go to you're music and pick what you want to listen to
2) go to the application you want to use
3) if the music continues to play you don't have a problem
4) If the music stops playing, mute the music from the app as you mentioned earlier (you can skip this step if you wish to listen to the app's other sounds (such as engine noises in racing games) while listening to your music (you will still want to mute the app's music))
5) to get your music to play again when the music stops, double click the home button quickly and the music controls should pop up (song info, prev. track, play/pause, next track)

hope that helps

if the music still doesn't play I don't know what to do

You know how when you change the volume, or mute the iPhone/iTouch, you get the bell symbol? Ok, so what if some functionality was added to that. When you activate/deactivate the mute switch you are given three check boxes. One for the phone(ring,txt,push,vm sounds), one for iPod music and one for apps. Thus if it's checked and the switch is off, it's still muted.

The same, sort of, goes for volume. You could have separate volume controls for each of those categories, triggered and accessed through the physical switches making them very easy to use.

I realize that this is easier said than done, but that's how I'd like to see it work.

One thing is for sure, the MUTE key should turn off ALL sounds at ALL times. (other than the Find My iPhone sounds when activated through MobileMe)

i dont mind , lol