Apple, which claims to invent any new technology that comes onto the market, said it is going to put a new radical bit of software on its iPhones.
The new iPhone firmware 4.0 will enable users to multi-task, which means that fanbois will actually be able to run programs at the same time.
An Apple fanboi told us: “It is a tribute to the genius of Steve Jobs that he can come up with such brilliant ideas. He knows what consumers want and provides it for us. I can pull up my email while web browsing who else could have thought up such a brilliant idea.”
AppleInsider is reporting that the "full-on solution" to multitasking will support "several" third party apps running at once in a "multi-tasking manager”.
It uses interface technology already bundled with its Mac OS X operating system."
In other words, it is Exposé, which is a multi-window view that's already found its way into phones like the HTC Legend. Android phones have had multitasking for ages as does Windows Mobile 7. In fact there are few high end mobile phones which do not.
We guess Steve Jobs' latest innovation will end up on the iPad too, something which is a little daft that it lacks, given that most other netbooks on the market have it.
He's referring to the iPod.app application bundle, which is one of the only apps permitted to run a background process.
This is why music carries on playing even if you quit the iPod application.
Mail.app is another app which has background process privileges, which permits it to fetch email when the app is not selected.
The 'core' multitask functionality is there, but it's restricted to the apps that Apple chooses. Which, at present, isn't many.
Other applications, in particular 3rd party ones, are not permitted to run a background process - hitting the 'home' button forces them to quit, and the CPU cycles and RAM are freed up.
Such apps have to make do with push-notifications, which are delivered over the air via Apple's own servers.
If multi-tasking is opened up to other apps (I say 'if' because the article to which Nick Farrell refers doesn't actually state that Apple have made this announcement, but Nick isn't known for his accuracy) then it would be interesting to see how they limit the impact on battery life.
Seeing as Apple have been banging on about that being the reason to leave multi-tasking out in the cold, I'm wondering i this feature will only be available on a 4th generation iPhone which may have a beefed up battery life.