Is Apple considering background processes?

Remember the last time Apple said anything about background processes? Yeah, they brushed it off as ridiculous given current battery technology. What a lame excuse. Apparently, they are finally beginning to realize that’s just not going to cut it. TechCrunch, Gruber and Alley Insider have all independently rumored that Apple will allow at least some background processes on the iPhone in the not too distant future.

So, here’s the deal. If you want your application to be background enabled, it has to pass through more detailed Apple inspection before they just say OK. Fine by me. Not all applications need to run in the background. I’m not going to cry if I exit my game and it stops running. But I would like my instant messenger to stay running, or even my news feeds etc.

It’s possible that Apple is gearing up for this kind of functionality as a result of a new piece of hardware. Maybe current hardware really can’t support this kind of functionality without dying in a couple of hours, and maybe the CPU can’t even handle it. This really wouldn’t surprise me after seeing how the iPhone tends to stutter on the frame rate when it gets overwhelmed. But a new iPhone might be able to handle all of this. One with more CPU power and battery life. I don’t think we’ll have too much longer to wait to find out.

Via [Gizmodo]