2 videos playing back simultaneously on IPAD PRO - supported or plans to support?

[boethius]

iPAD Pro 2017 is a pretty powerful device with A10X chip and Promotion. Can be considered nearly desktop class power.

iOS 11.x has more features to empower users to multitask with split screens, floating docks, etc.

When I try to play a youtube video in Safari and another one in YouTube app at the same time (since you cannot apparently have two instances of the same program launched in iOS at present), unfortunately one video stops playing when the second one is started.

MacBooks with OSX don't have such a limitation. So I was wondering if this is a conscious decision by Apple to limit multitasking ability for some reason other than hardware constraints (since it's clearly powerful enough)?

Is there a way to achieve what I'm trying to do? Or are there plans by Apple to enable this in a future iOS release?

Thanks in advance for your experienced input.

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

What Apple has planned for the future is tightly held information and not normally released to the general public until Apple does so. As for not being able to play two videos at once, you need to consider that the graphics capability of the iPad Pro is not near as powerful as the graphics on a MacBook Pro or iMac.

 

[boethius]

Welcome to our forums.

What Apple has planned for the future is tightly held information and not normally released to the general public until Apple does so. As for not being able to play two videos at once, you need to consider that the graphics capability of the iPad Pro is not near as powerful as the graphics on a MacBook Pro or iMac.

it's true that it is not as powerful in graphics as MacBook Pro or iMac, but there have been benchmarks done and it's certainly giving the MacBook 12 and MacBook 13 baseline plus MacBook Air 13 a run for its money, and those can do multiple instances of the same application at once, multiple videos playing at once, multiple music streams at once.. they run on OSX, so I'm wondering if there was some deliberate limitation set by Apple on iOS to prevent this.. it's not hardware limited as far as raw power goes.. but maybe for some other technical reason limiting it to a single stream at a time, it isn't possible.. at least for now.

 

[mrplow]

I don't think it's a power issue. You can edit two 4k streams on the iPad.

I think it's simply a user experience choice. I.E. only have one AV source playing at any one time. Which, I'd suggest, suits most users perfectly. Got music playing? No need to stop it to play a you tube clip, the OS will stop the existing source in favour of the latest request.

I'm sure there are some, like yourself, that have a need/want to play videos simultaneously but I can't see it ever becoming a mainstream feature.

 

[pigoo3]

Maybe the answer is as simple as very few iPad users want or need to view two videos simultaneously...and thus Apple has not designed this ability into the iPad. There will always be features that a minority of users will want. Apple can't possibly enable every feature every user would ever want...otherwise the iOS would become serious "bloatware" filled with features many users don't want & will never use.

Whether you agree with this or not is a different matter. If you disagree...and you think this is a feature lots & lots of users would want...contact Apple...explain why you think lots of users would want this feature...and maybe they'll agree.

- Nick