iPhone OS 4 Multitasking Debacle
Since the beginning, everybody and their brother has been looking for some kind of good multitasking solution for the iPhone. Unfortunately, it looks like there won’t be any good solution (by my standards) on this platform.
iPhone multitasking: past, present, and future. (please read on)
The iPhone OS, built on the same BSD UNIX foundation as Mac OS X, has had integrated multitasking support at it’s lowest layers since day 1; Some of which shines through the cracks to the top layers in the form of the mail and phone applications being capable of, and making all-the-time use of this integrated multitasking to do background mail checking and call / voice mail notification.
Fortunately, some enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to do the first jailbreak; A process that allows aspiring individuals to run “insecure” unencrypted program code on the platform to basically reprogram the device to their will. To the rapture of many, this included the creation of an application known as “Backgrounder”, which worked by tricking the operating system into thinking that the applications that have been selected as “backgroundable” were legitimate apple application that were blessed with the ability of running in the background (like mail and phone) allowing you to switch back and forth between applications.
