We have been hearing about this for years through all the grapevines but nothing has ever come out of it. Multi-tasking on the iPhone. That rumor is swirling around yet again. The iPad drops tomorrow. What is the next big thing on Apple’s plate? A new iPhone this summer and a new OS 4.0 to go with it.

Let’s set the record straight, the phone is totally capable of it - just ask anyone who has jailbroken theirs. That means that if multi-tasking is not done, that’s on purpose. Apple has its reasons for doing this and they all make sense but they it is still a hindrance and there is some hypocrisy involved. I’ll explain what I mean.

What are the detractors for enabling multi-tasking?

Battery life in a phone with existing substandard battery performance

Memory management - the iPhone’s greatest feature is that it never crashes which can be forgotten about with multi-tasking. Palm OS users want to chime in here?

App switching/closing - this is not a detractor as much as it’s something just needs to be addressed. You have an app open. How do you open another without closing the first? What if you want to close the first? This needs to be built which takes away from the simplicity of the home button.

Why is it a hindrance to not have it?

I can’t listen to music on Pandora and check an email while keeping the music going.

I can’t play a game and stop to respond to an SMS and come back to where I left off.

Think of anything you do on your iPhone for an extended period of time (let’s say 10 minutes straight) and then think about all the ways that can be interrupted (text, email, phone calls, push notifications) and realize how much productivity would be gained if you could pick up where you left off.

Hypocrisy?

Have you ever been listening to music in iTunes and moved applications elsewhere and the music kept playing? I suppose that means Apple will partially allow it with their native apps but 3rd party apps don’t count. Checking email and listening to music with the iPod function still causes battery drain, right?

I know there are push notifications now and that helps a little. So you can log into Yahoo messenger and leave the app and a push notification will alert you when a message comes in. Even with that, when you enter the app it is opening as if from scratch which causes a delay that you wouldn’t have if you were opening a minimized application.

So what does this mean? Will they include it. Several places are reporting this but there is no date for 4.0 out there yet. There is no justification for this except one major business idea. Competitors have offered multi-tasking all along but not enough of everything else to be an issue. With WebOS and Android picking up steam and Blackberry in the background with its own market share, it’s time Apple started addressing the concerns of their customers. I think everyone agrees that an overhaul of the OS to bring in some killer features like multi-tasking and something nobody really sees coming is needed. Bringing us a  new revision number on small hardware changes and no “wow features” this summer will narrow the gap and Apple will no longer have the lead they have now. They even run the risk of falling behind.