iPhone 2.0 OS jailbreak and what it means for multi-tasking applications
By Will Park on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 2:04 PM PST In Apple, Applications, Developer, iPhone, iPhone OS
If you’re the type to abide by the rules and let Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) decide which applications you can and cannot run on your iPhone, then you’ll be just fine running third-party applications from the AppStore that don’t run in the background. Sure, they might offer you a saved-state feature that launches the 
application in to the same state you left it in, but without any active processes in the background, these official iPhone applications aren’t exactly multi-tasking friendly.
On the other hand, if you’re of the rules-were-meant-to-be-broken camp, there’s yet another reason to jailbreak that iPhone or iPhone 3G of yours. Admittedly, with the AppStore offering so many free applications that we’ve gone blurry-eyed trying to download and play with them all, there’s less demand for free jailbreak applications. But, what the new Pwnage Tool 2.0.1 and Winpwn jailbreak solutions offer are true multi-tasking applications from “rogue” third-party developers.
Apple has forced iPhone developers’ hands in keeping their applications restricted to running one at a time. While official Apple iPhone applications, like Mail and Safari, have no problem multi-tasking, third-party AppStore applications are left in the dark. That’s where jailbreak applications come in.
Since jailbreak application developers aren’t restricted by the same iPhone SDK restrictions, they can develop their applications to take full advantage of all the iPhone’s resources. That means third-party jailbreak applications can run in the background and allow true multi-tasking support alongside Apple’s own iPhone applications.
And, developers are updating their jailbreak applications to run with the new iPhone 2.0 OS. Says prolific iPhone developer Jonathan Zdziarski:
“This means that it doesn’t matter what kind of desktop OS you run, you can still build great iPhone apps. Some changes have been made to the private API headers from v1.x to make them code-compatible with 2.0. This means most of your 1.x applications will rebuild for 2.0 with very few, if any, changes. Saurik has also provided a signing tool to sign your applications (ldid -S /path/to/binary). You’ll need to do this only once to make your application run.”
I can see legit iPhone application developers going to the “dark-side” of iPhone development to create versions of their applications that can run in the background. We’re not likely to hear much from these types of developers, as they’d want to stay in Apple’s good graces and remain in the AppStore. But, I wouldn’t be surprised to see applications similar to those offered in the AppStore popping up in jailbreak-land. Legit AppStore monger by day, rogue jailbreak developer by night.
So, you want third-party applications that can multi-task with the best of ‘em? Well, what are you waiting for? Go jailbreak that iPhone 3G or updated iPhone now!
[Via: iPhone Atlas]
Well that’s all fine and dandy, but people fail to realize that the high degree of stability *will come with apps available on the app store. You cannot get this from 3rd party jailbroken apps as far as I know.
The hassle of constantly crashing and buggy software is nowhere near as bad on the app store as it was previously for jailbroken phone prior to OS 2.0 being released for the iphone. Not to mention your already crappy battery life will suffer even more at the hands of developers who lack sufficient coding skills to ensure proper power management on the iphone.
@Shea Just because apple is hosting the applications does not make them any more battery smart or safer than 3party apps on jailbroken phones (example: I am Rich). In fact to imply that all 3party programers are hacks and lack coding skills in awfully short sighted… MANY MANY apps that are currently offered on the app store are up there because of the 3party programers put their apps up! Same programs. In the long run putting apps on your iphone requires the same thought process you should use when installing on your computer… “what will this program do for me.. and to me….”