Are you happy with how applications run on your iPhone or iPod touch? Many users have been asking Apple for a way to let more than one program run at the same time, a request that's gone unfulfilled so far.

Multitasking has been at the core of computer use for decades. Even text-based DOS could support multitasking with the help of add-on program managers. If nothing else, it's really strange that Apple didn't include this functionality in the first place. The company has stated that this is to preserve the battery and keep the system running fast, but shouldn't the decision of that trade-off be up to you, not Apple? Some people have speculated that the phone's interface is to blame, not having any hardware buttons to use for switching between tasks, but that doesn't play out, as Windows Mobile gets by just fine.

Right now each time you change programs, the current one has to totally shut down before the next can begin. While Apple's phone and media playback software can run in the background, no problem, all third-party software is out of luck. Apple has promised a system called "push" that could let applications finally communicate with other as if they were running simultaneously, but nothing's come of it yet.

Apple's idea would let programs push small data fragments to each other, sort of working like text messages between phone users. One program could send a push through the phone's operating system, which would then be received by the target program the next time it's run. That might work for non time-sensitive communication between apps, but it falls short of a solution to the multitasking problem.

Further down the road, and what Apple really needs to hurry up and bring to its customers, is full-on multitasking, likely coming in the next big iPhone firmware update, version 3.0. Even then, you're likely to be limited by the current phone's hardware, but that's just what new iPhone models are for, aren't they?

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