> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://birchtree.me/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Multitasking vs Parallelism
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/multitasking-vs-parallelism/
- Published: 2021-05-28T01:23:29.000Z
- Updated: 2021-05-28T01:23:29.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler
- Tags: ipad, #Import 2023-06-01 22:41, #Import 2025-03-29 19:29

In my mind, “multitasking” in computers is the ability for the user to actively work on several things at the same time.

Then there’s “parallelism,” which I think of as multitasking+. Yes, it’s partially me working on different things, but also the ability to me to tell my computer to do something, and then I move on to totally different things while it does its thing. For me it’s out of sight, out of mind, but it’s still happening. Examples of this could be rendering a video in Final Cut, downloading a large file in Safari, running a script on a remote server, or moving a file onto an external hard drive. Foreground, background, whatever, the computer knows I want to do it, and will keep going no matter what.

iOS 9 gave us multitasking on the iPad, and I really hope iPadOS 15 makes parallelism more powerful. At the very lest, I’d love it if I could simply start a video export in LumaFusion on my iPad Pro, throw the app in the background, and do other things while it works on it, I’d be very happy.