So the white apple shows up and that means it has been powered off, and if the green battery shows up that also means it is powered off? But if I double click the home button, get all the apps that are running to squiggle, then x them out, what is still using power?
I really appreciate your help understanding this because it seems so simple but I don't know what is running if I have x'ed out all the apps? Thanks so much tweppoet, you also are very helpful in all forums. Squib
Oh ya, does the iPad work slower the more apps you download?
The list in the multitask bar is just a list. It shows every app that you've ever run, unless you close them out manually. The fact that an app is in the list means only two things. One, you have run it. Two, the higher in the list the app is the more recently you've run it.
The more recent apps are probably in RAM. The iPad leaves apps frozen in RAM so that they can be switched back to quickly. When the iPad needs more RAM, it automatically clears the older apps from RAM.
When you restart or reset, all apps are cleared from RAM.
In most cases, apps frozen in RAM do nothing. They use no power and they take up no CPU (don't slow the iPad). The exception are those apps that have background tasks. There are seven types of background tasks allowed in iOS. The most common, and the ones you need to pay attention to are location services and background music.
It's pretty obvious when music is playing, so lets talk about location services. If an app is running location services in the background you will see an arrow icon to the left of your battery level indicator. The arrow points to the to the top right and has a divot out of the backside (to distinguish it from the background music icon that looks like a play icon.)
If these services are running, and you don't want them to, then you can eitehr go to the app and turn off the music or location tracking, or close the app out of the multitask bar manually.
Most other background tasks are time limited, like file downloads which only allows an app to continue downloading for 10 minutes after the app is closed). In general, they should have little affect on your iPad's performance.
Now, the other side of the argument.
Being a computer, the longer an iPad runs without being restarted the more errors accumulate. Errors in apps can be cleared out by removing the app from RAM, and starting it again. This is a good quick fix when an app starts behaving erratically, but you don't want to restart the iPad. iOS can also start having problems managing RAM. Clearing out the RAM by closing everything in the multitask bar will help, but a restart would be a cleaner solution. You should restart the iPad every now and then anyway. Once a week, or when you notice problems is a good idea.
Some people choose to clear our their multitask bars as a habit. There is nothing wrong with this, and it has some advantages. Depending on what apps are being run, the stability of those apps, and the limited resources of older iPads, it's not a bad idea. However a newer iPad running stable apps should rarely need anything but an occasional restart.
That said, if I have trouble with an app, I may choose to remove it from RAM rather than restart my iPad. I rarely bother to clean the entire multitask list. A restart takes less time, since my list gets quite long.
Fraser Speirs - Blog - Misconceptions About iOSÂ Multitasking
Oh, the green battery just means the iPad is on, and charging. You see it on the lock screen when the iPad is charging. It is surprisingly hard to charge an iPad while it is off. Plugging it into power generally turns it on, unless the battery is very low.