iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

16.1. Detecting the Availability of Multitasking

Problem

You want to find out whether the iOS device running your application supports multitasking.

Solution

Call the isMultitaskingSupported instance method of UIDevice, like so:

- (BOOL) isMultitaskingSupported{

    BOOL result = NO;
    if ([[UIDevice currentDevice]
         respondsToSelector:@selector(isMultitaskingSupported)]){
        result = [[UIDevice currentDevice] isMultitaskingSupported];
    }
    return result;

}

- (BOOL)            application:(UIApplication *)application
  didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{

    if ([self isMultitaskingSupported]){
        NSLog(@"Multitasking is supported.");
    } else {
        NSLog(@"Multitasking is not supported.");
    }

    self.window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:
                   [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]];

    self.window.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];
    return YES;
}

Discussion

Your application, depending on the iOS devices it targets, can be run and executed on a variety of devices on different versions of iOS. For instance, you may be developing your app using the latest iOS SDK but set the target iOS version (the minimum version of iOS on which your app can run) to one version lower than the latest SDK version. In this case, an older device with that OS version can still run your app, but that device may not support multitasking. The golden rule in software development or even in life (not trying to be philosophical) is that if you make an assumption, you’ll eventually be wrong. So never make an ...