Just last week we previewed for you an upcoming jailbreak tweak known as Dash. It’s likely that Dash will be out sometime this week, but in the meantime, another interesting multitasking tweak is now live in the Cydia store and it’s absolutely free! The new tweak is called MissionBoardby iOS developer John Coates and the idea for the interface comes from a concept creator named Joost van der Ree.
As shown, the interface follows a vertical scrolling method and shows all open applications with a screenshot of its last activity. Each screenshot is labeled with the application name and an icon of the application below it. In addition, the new application switcher shows you the Status Bar up at the top, so you can view that important information while moving through applications.
What do you think of when “App Switcher” comes to mind? Switching between applications? Closing out of ones that you are done using? – Apple has taken a torch and burned this thought into our minds with the introduction of their App Switcher in iOS 4. Unfortunately, MissionBoard only handles one of these functions – switching between applications. It doesn’t come with a way to actually close out of applications from the background.
The good news is, since the MissionBoard interface is invoked by an Activator action, you can set it separately from Apple’s version of the App Switcher to use Apple’s App Switcher for closing out of applications and MissionBoard simply for your multitasking needs. For now however, you should not set the Activator action to double-pressing the home button because it will launch both MissionBoard and the App Switcher simultaneously. We have reached out to the developer to discuss this issue and the ability to close applications from MissionBoard and we will keep you guys updated when we hear back from him.
In terms of appearance, I would say the tweak is an easy 4/5. The problem is the functionality, which seems limited in comparison to Apple’s own App Switcher. If you aren’t the kind of person that cleans up after yourself when using applications on your iOS device, then maybe MissionBoard will be just fine for you how it sits. If you are always cleaning up after yourself, you would either be better off skipping MissionBoard, or if you like the interface too much, using a hybrid between MissionBoard and Apple’s implementation.
When you go into the Settings application, you will find a preferences pane for MissionBoard that contains only two options – the ability to enable and disable the tweak on demand and the ability to set an Activator action for using the application-switching interface. Every time you enable or disable the tweak, you will need to respring your device.
MissionBoard requires iOS 5 to install, but the good news is the developer did include support for the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod touch. Since the tweak is supported on multiple devices, everyone will get a chance to try this free tweak out if they would like to. As of this writing, I can’t recommend the tweak as a replacement for the App Switcher, but maybe a future update could change that.
Name: MissionBoard
Price: FREE
Version: 1.1
Requirements: iOS 5
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: John Coates
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