The new iPhone SDK is going to give developers another tool in their arsenal. The new iPhone SDK has a sort of semi background process support that has been discovered. It is important to note that this is not background process support, at least not in the true sense of the word. Also, the documentation that comes with the SDK still says only one application can run at a time. So what is all this you are hearing about background process support?

The whole discussion around this is because a certain method of allowing an application to gain or lose active status. This would suggest that applications could have the ability to run in the background. It is misleading though. In actuality, it will just allow an application to continue to run when the device is locked, or if a window opens over the current application. Just as now, if you hit the home button, or open a new application, the current one exits. The documentation of the SDK says it very well.

“When an application is inactive, it is executing but is not dispatching incoming events. This occurs when an overlay window pops up or when the device is locked.”

This is at least a step in the right direction. While we can only hope for true background process support, the iPhone developers have seemed to do very well without it. With it's broad scope of applications and powerful interface, the iPhone already is a hot platform for developers, background process support or not.

[Via iPhone Atlas]