iPhone OS: We don’t need No Multitasking…but We need Something

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the iPhone OS's lack of multitasking. That is, the iPhone OS can only let one app run at a time, and this is a frustration for many people, myself included.

The introduction of the iPad has led to an increase in this chatter, largely because the assumption is that this device, too, will be limited to (essentially) running only one app at a time.

To be clear, the iPhone OS supports multitasking just fine. It shares its core with Mac OS X and obviously that runs multiple apps without any concern. The iPhone OS is no different, and many apps DO run in the background including Phone, Mail, Safari and a few others. The problem is these are all Apple's apps, and no third-party apps have been granted permission to do this.