During the short course of time that I’ve taken to write this post, Apple was able to change my mind on the importance of allowing multiple apps to run concurrently.  Here was my initial intro:

Maybe one of the first few posts is a bad time to vent a complaint about the iPhone OS, but seriously, it’s a major restraint put on developers and users by Apple. Not only are you not allowed to run multiple applications, 3rd party apps cannot run in the background.

Now in the last few days, which were the first few days of me actually owning an iPhone the experience I’ve had with the iPhone has been extremely good.  I’ve actually found with the app’s ability to save the current state and return you to it upon re-initiation of the app, you don’t lose much at all to the inability to run multiple apps.

Granted there are categories of applications that are still unattainable due to the restraint.  During some of the initial brainstorming phases of applications for TriMutiny we had many applications that we thought were great ideas and I’m sure 17 other companies had those same ideas, but because of the restraints of only one app at a time and no 3rd party apps running in the background, their feature list became very stale…to the point of useless.  However, the disadvantage may not be as much of an issue as I had originally expected.

I can definitely understand the reason for a single application at at time in order to help with the management of resources and a perception of stability.  The interesting part of it though is that most of the iPhone users don’t even notice that this restraint is in place.  Their competition on the other hand, definitely does.  Take for example, this ad that Sprint runs for the HTC.  It is sure to mention twice it’s ability to run multiple apps.  They do the same in their Palm Pre commercials.  However, instead of shooting back Apple just decides to let it go and not mention the issue which is probably best.

After taking it all in I’m glad I decided to go ahead and get the iPhone.  Even though our business is starting out by creating iPhone applications I had questioned whether or not I would join my  other two partners in owning an iPhone and the inability of the iPhone to run multiple applications was one of the main reasons for me to question whether or not I should go for it.  So if you find yourself having those same thoughts when you are considering your next smart phone, realize that it’s not as big of an issue as you might think.