On my ipad ver 4.3.1 I can't seem to understand the process of closing programs or apps. In reading the manual it says to double click the home button and it shows recently used apps. In another area of the manual it says to double click the home button & to see the open programs or apps. Further it says to close them you hold until they wiggle & press the dash in the circle. If I don't view this bar often there is a large buildup and is this using excess memory? Also even if I completely shut down the ipad the icons stay there. I guess this is hard to understand for a pc guy like me. I have always been under the impression that too many open programs slows the computer performance. Please some body set me straight as I have read the manual over & over and it seems silent on this. I know it used to be to close a app or program you press the home button once but I guess that has all changed. jim_joh

thanks for the response but are these icons open apps or programs or as stated in the manual recently opened ?? I am talking about 10 to 20 at any given time. Also I thought clearing the cache is the browser's cache. jim+joh

On windows when u open a program and then close it, u don't really close everything. DLLs are still cached, so next start up is faster. (unless u have unload DLLs option checked in registry)

iPad is Linux, and Linux has advanced memory management, program is in memory in suspended state, until another program requires memory, then operating system makes room for it. In other words amount of free memory is not a performance factor for Linux, as it tries to use maximum amount. Don't worry about "open" programs, not all of them are running, some have just code loaded into memory or disk cache.

Originally Posted by jim_joh

On my ipad ver 4.3.1 I can't seem to understand the process of closing programs or apps. In reading the manual it says to double click the home button and it shows recently used apps. In another area of the manual it says to double click the home button & to see the open programs or apps. Further it says to close them you hold until they wiggle & press the dash in the circle. If I don't view this bar often there is a large buildup and is this using excess memory? Also even if I completely shut down the ipad the icons stay there. I guess this is hard to understand for a pc guy like me. I have always been under the impression that too many open programs slows the computer performance. Please some body set me straight as I have read the manual over & over and it seems silent on this. I know it used to be to close a app or program you press the home button once but I guess that has all changed. jim_joh

The iPad's operating system, iOS, is not really a multi-tasking system in the way that PC guys understand. It's a task switching program. When you open up a new app, the last app that you were using has its 'context' (state) saved by iOS but it is no longer running, with the exception of some aspects that the app has 'asked' iOS to perform - for example, file downloading or playing music. But other aspects of that app are 'frozen'.

So, for example, if you had a spreadsheet running a calculation and then switched to another app that calculation would be halted by iOS and its context stored. When you switched back to that spreadsheet, iOS would reload the context and the calculation would resume exactly where it had left off - but it wouldn't have been running in the meantime.

So, unlike a PC, all those apps that you see in the multi-task bar do not slow the iPad down - they are not running they are merely apps that the iPad has 'remembered' the context of.

If you close an app, by getting them to jiggle and then hitting the 'X' you are merely telling iOS to forget the context and completely close the app.

Tim
Scotland

Excellent explanations there from Tim and gray_mouse. Thanks!

Linux... I thought that was the piano-player in the Peanuts cartoons, the one Lucy was keen on. Lol