New support for multiple 3rd-party applications will be available in iPhone 4.0 OS via a windows management mechanism which apparently will be similar to the Mac OS X OS reports an article over on apple insider.
According to people that are familiar with the tech and apple’s plans, the new firmware will enable users to launch multiple applications in the background on the iPhone and switch between them quickly, and thus multitasking.
Apple has up until now avoided supporting multiple applications running with a view to conserving iPhone battery life along with simplifying the user experience.
The people familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 have stated that the user interface will be similar to the desktop Expose feature and that hitting the home button twice will launch an expose style interface which will deliver several icons that represent the currently running applications and enable the user to select one and switch directly.