Apple is planning allowing iPhone apps running in the background, according to MacRumor today. This idea could be fixing one of the iPhone's biggest shortcomings and showing that its planned push-notification system (that Apple had announced at the Worldwide Developer's Conference back in June) for the iPhone was not the best solution.

Apple does not currently allow 3rd party iPhone applications to run as background processes. Instead, apps must shut down completely after use. Push notifications was Apple's solution to allow applications to receive notices while they are not the active application. Certain services, such as Instant Messaging, would benefit greatly from this feature.

By now, it's clear that something is holding up the Push notification service. While we aren't sure what the specific issues are, we've heard that as an alternative Apple is considering allowing apps to run as user selectable background processes. If so, this feature would likely come in the rumored iPhone 3.0 software update but would be limited to only one or two processes on current hardware. The next generation iPhone, however, would likely see less restricted background process support due to its improved hardware.

Will it be implemented in the next-gen iPhone?

[via MacRumor]