Our iPhones and iPads are fast little beasts, but it can still take a long time to load up an app you need in a pinch. A new team of engineers, however, have figured out a way to allow iOS to read your mind and start launching the next app you need before you even tap its icon.
The technology is called predictive caching, and it works similarly to predictive texting. Using predicting caching, your iPhone or iPad would scrutinize your behavior while using your device, and start putting together a database of how you use your apps.
When it’s learned enough about how you use your iPhone or iPad, it would know, for instance, that you tend to always launch Facebook in the mornings right after you check your mail using Sparrow. Knowing this, as soon as you load up Sparrow over your first cup of coffee in the morning, your iPhone could begin caching assets for Facebook, guaranteeing that when you switch apps, it’s a quick and seamless experience.
The concept has been coded together by Tingxin Yan from UMass Amherst, who found that predictive cachine actually improves the average app’s boot time by 70 percent, for just a 2% battery hit.
Seems worth it to me: app loading times have a lot to do with a device’s perceived speed. Unfortunately, predictive caching is a tech in its infancy, and it could be a while yet — or never! — before Apple decides to implement something like this in iOS.
Source: New Scientist
