Not to be a downer, but there’s one thing I just don’t like about the iPhone OS. On my Windows Mobile phone, I have a tendency to keep open a lot of programs–my email, an eBook in the reader software, Pocket Informant with my calendar and tasks, Tiny Twitter (a great WM Twitter program!), and sometimes a few others. If I’m stuck somewhere with nothing to do, I’ll usually have my IM program pulled up in the background in case a friend pops online to save me from eternal boredom.

What’s the key word here? It’s background, my friends. As we all know, the iPhone doesn’t allow for apps to be run in the background. For instance, the new, official last.fm client can’t run in the background while you’re playing songs from your iPod, so right now there is no mobile scrobbling. That is a HUGE bummer for me, because I was really looking forward to last.fm picking up tracks as I played them. Same with AIM–if you want to chat with your buddies, fine…but you can’t do anything else in between IM messages.

I understand the various reasons behind not having apps running in the background (chiefly memory and battery power), but I still hate not being able to do it. Thankfully, there is a sort-of solution on the horizon…yesterday Apple released the iPhone Push Notification API to a select group of developers. The Push Notification Service keeps your programs connected with third-party servers to alert you of any new happening (like an IM, for instance). Back in the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs indicated that this service would be available to users in October, so I guess the heat is on to get it integrated into the 2.0 apps that have come out so far. I’m interested to see how it will actually work. Will it be disruptive to the iPhone user experience to have constant updates from various programs? I have to believe it will be more seamless than that, but I guess only time will tell!

How do you feel about background-running apps vs. push notification? Talk back in the comments!