Well, it’s not completely unexpected, but the iPhone is finally getting third-party multitasking with the 4.0 software.
“If you don’t do it right, your phone will feel sluggish and your battery life will go down,” said CEO Steve Jobs at the unveiling today. “We’ve figured out how to avoid those things, and that’s what took us a little longer, and I think we’ve nailed it.”
As we thought, you’ll hit the home button twice and a small windows rises up that shows what programs are running. This is a big effing deal because it will further galvanize the already-strong iPhone developer base.
Apple will be offering seven multitasking services including background audio streaming (hello Pandora), voice over IP, background location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion and fast app switching. The implementation is supposed to be relatively easy, as Pandora said it took them only a day to make the streaming service “background aware.”
So, iPhone fans, if this was all you get with iPhone 4.0, would you be happy?