Some bad advice from the *Legal Productivity* blog:
> *2) Close Your Apps.*
> Apps will stay open unless you explicitly close them, even if you restart your phone. That means they’re running in the background, consuming computing resources even though you’re not aware they’re running. And “consuming computing resources” is engineering-speak for “using the battery”.
> To close unused apps, tap the home button twice, which will bring up a row of open apps across the bottom of your screen. Locate the app or apps you wish to close, then press on one of them for a couple of seconds until it starts to wiggle and shows a red ‘X’ in the upper-right hand corner. Hit the ‘X’ and the app is closed.
I still have no idea where this “advice” comes from. Even my father mentioned it to me the other day. As an effort to combat disinformation, I refer you to [John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/ios_multitasking):
> Bottom line: the iOS multitasking bar is not like the command tab switcher on Mac or Windows. It is not a list of currently “running” applications. It is simply a list of your most recently used applications, whether they’re running in the background, suspended in memory, or completely inactive. Notice, for example, that if you turn an iOS device off and on, completely restarting the device, the multitasking tray still shows the same apps. It’s like your browser history.
and, for the most succinct response, [Fraser Speirs](http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html):
> Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There are caveats to this but anyone dispensing the advice above is clearly uninformed enough that they will certainly not be aware of these subtleties.
Got it? You **do not** have to manually close your apps in iOS. Unfortunately, it seems like this “advice” simply will not die.