I'm doing some feasibility research on remote app control (using Bluetooth) in combination with IPC on an iPad.

I'm particularly interested in knowing whether IPC is even possible on an iPad where my app would be controlling a 3rd party proprietary app. For instance, would it be possible to have my app issue a 'next/previous picture' request in an image viewer of choice? Assuming of course the image viewer in question would be capable of handling such a request.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

iOS was built with security in mind.

This means apps are pretty much sandboxed and cannot interact with each other. Also iOS does not an TRUE multitasking, yes apps can do certain things in the the background or finish doing something in the background but the full app canon continue running indefinitely in the background.


Their are a few instances where the apps can communicate with set API's that apple has provided for things like knowing what music is currently being played and being able to pause,play, or skip to next track. But these are things that apple has safely opened for developers to use.


Even the times when you can have one app open and tell it top open a file using a different app. The app actually does not communicate with the other app at all, iOS makes a copy of the file to be opened and then tells the other app to open this new copy of the file on its own.




Whey you say IPC are you talking about the iPod Connection cable(30 pin connector)? If that is the case, there is a reason why there are so few iPod connector accessories. To make something that uses iPod connector, you have to get in contact with apple and get their approval for it as will as pay them a good deal of money. Most companies do not do this because of the costs involved in getting permission to use the iPod Connector with their 3rd party device if it does anything more then just charge/play music/control music.

Thank you for your response. By IPC I meant inter-process communication (like shared memory, pipes, UNIX sockets, signals, etc.). Looking forward to any additional information you may have, knowing now which acronym I was using .

As far As I know the only kind of inter-process communication in iOS is invoking other app by URL schemes which is probably falls short from what you are trying to accomplish.