Couple last days I've been playing with SDK and find it really a nice tool. It restricts at many point, but well, it still gives you quite some stuff which you can sucessfully and reliably use and build your apps.
Frankly speaking, after and while using Blackberry I was pretty annoyed with the fact (exactly the *fact*) that there is no multitasking. It's just our brain, used to the fact that it should be there, complains and grumbles.
Reality check? Well, I do use background apps on Blackberry. IM (beejive). Twitter. Uh-oh. That should be it. You?
The fact that you have N number of applications running in the background does not give you anything. They are just there. Slow sleeping or just doing nothing, keep their chunk of memory and loading your tiny CPU to keep them alive.
So what really happens when you SWITCH to application? (Which is in background). It "wakes up", shows off itself, same data, same status, everything the same.
Hold on - but isn't that exactly what iPhone allow all applications to implement?! You've got an event before shutdown, even after launch, you can save and load all the info about application status you ever would want; restore it properly, restore the UI (views) - here we go - your app will look like it never left the stage, was just hiding in "virtual ;-) background".
I was able to implement basics of it easily, within an hour, being a complete newbie to Objective-C and iPhone SDK. And it works. So, now, I assume, all those developers of all those apps which didn't do that, but instead think that "multitasking saves everybody" - just ignorant of existing functionality. Actually, I think that multitasking is a much more complex and painful thing to properly develop and debug -- than just simple state saving/loading.
There are exclusions always, certainly, in this case, too. Sometimes you may want to run background music app and you want to browse Web at the same time. That's true. Apple putted their foot down and decided it's only their iPod app has this priveledge.
Also, you may want to open Web page and while it is loading, switch to email, and then may be twitter, and then to Web page - which you expect to be loaded already. True. Valid case. Reality check? Does not work that well on Blackberries, neither on Androids. With all the multitasking. You are on *mobile* device, with only EDGE or 3G connection (usually), you have small chunk of memory and CPU isn't big. All that leads to the fact that page probably is not loaded, or half-loaded by the time you switched back. True multitasking? Yeah... NO.
So, this is just my personal take on this problem. Again, I was kind of dissapointed myself with the fact that "no multitasking" on those pretty iPhones and iPads, but by given a look from the different angle, and from the perspective of real use - I do not care that much, really. I have no doubt that once mobile devices catch up a little bit more with CPU speeds and energy use - magically Apple will bring multitasking on board. Till then.. I am fine without it. ;-)
