On the iPhone? Are you kidding?

All the issues you mention are not restrictions of the SDK but restrictions of the iPhone itself.

Of all the applications currently on the iPhone none of them run "background" processes, and more importantly none of them idle on internet (at least on Edge, haven't tested wifi as uch) when the phone is not in use.

There does seem to be some kind of service on the iPhone that periodically comes online and runs a set of tasks, like checking email. The SDK hasn't been out long enough and isn't documented deeply enough to know if SDK users will have access to this service. Regardless, the phone doesn't sit online when idle, which is why the battery life is so good and probably why the restriction remains in place for 3rd party developers as well as apple's own applications.

Also, the processing core isn't great at running a lot of stuff in parallel. Applications that aren't running in the foreground aren't getting resources. Start loading a page in Safari and then go to another app, that page won't continue loading and rendering until you move back to it.

And finally. Your comment about not being able to run other "executables" is a little misleading. First off, Firefox extensions and themes are not their own executable files for the most part. They are javascript and static files that are pulled in to the main application and interpreted to run, they don't require executable permissions and would work if the FF was suitable for the iPhone. The limitation for one application not to launch another executable is probably due to the same hardware limitations mentioned earlier, that applications in the foreground are the ones that get resources, so if an application launches another process in parallel which one gets resources?

Keep in mind, although this device is somewhat PCish the processor isn't suitable for strong parallelization. Hopefully the Intel Atom really takes off and we get that kind of performance on mobile, but until then the iPhone (and pretty much every other mobile operating system) will be dealing with these kinds of limitations.

PalmOS is an OS that doesn't allow background processing. iPhone's does. Anyway, if the system allows it and it's not a hardware or firmware hack, what can they do? Tweak the kernel so it can't run on some later version? Sounds like Apple wants to keep some sort of DRM encoder in their back pocket just in case.

Music plays in the background when you use other applications (except the phone) and it plays when the phone is off. Is that not considered working in the background? There must be a process that tells the software to go to the next track.

If you seriously think that Apple is going to give developers carte blanche to deploy apps that continue to suck battery life in the background while the user forgets that they're spinning away, you're absolutely nuts!

Yet again, the 'I want it all nowwwwwwww' footsie stompers want Apple to give them the capabilities of bringing the platform to a screeching halt.

Well done Apple. Keep it under control.

and emotionally unstable....

The battery life argument makes some degree of sense, but that decision should be left to the user, shouldn't it?

The OS isn't well suited to running multiple background processes? Are you kidding? It's FreeBSD, which I can assure you is absolutely exceptional at running multiple background processes - better than anything else that can run on computers costing less than 7 figures. That's one of the reasons Apple chose it as the foundation for OS X in the first place. After spending decades ignoring the very real problems with Apple operating systems (worse-than-Windows memory management, laughable networking capabilities), now the Apple-ites are conjuring non-existent shortcomings in a truly great OS to explain Apple policy.

It's a support issue. If they allow all developers to make full use of the OS, there is the potential that someone will do something stupid and/or malevolent. So Apple can either commit a lot of resources to vetting every app that anyone writes, or they can use less resources by allowing less access to low level functionality. It's a pretty safe bet that they will have some kind of diamond-crusted platinum partner program that allows companies to write really cool shit as long as they pay, covering the costs of the quality control that requires. And if there is a shred of the Old Apple left, they will give the Mozilla project (and other major open source projects) top level membership for free.

And $99 a year for 'standard' membership and be able to write 'free' apps for it?

$299 for 'enterprise' membership and be able to write enterprise apps?

There is a 'free' membership. Does that include the ability to distribute your apps via the 'App Store'?

Did I read correctly yesterday that the iphone gets them 'free' but the itouch requires a charge for 'accounting'? Why do that to the itouch users? I found it interesting that Apple charges for the latest update for the itouch. Gouging or silly?

This opens up a whole new can-o-worms and a lot of profit potential on Apple's part. Will their attempts at milking developers work to help development or kill it.

I suspect enterprise licensing is a group license (bottom tier) to afford a small company a cheaper way to develop their apps w/o having to purchase singular licenses to do that. We don't for instance get our Java SDK's from Sun, we get them in house.

How's the Steve Jobs kool-aid tasting these days?

There are lots of things to love about the iPhone, but lots of things not -- a more or less useless keyboard, a lack of blackberry-like shortcuts, etc. The restriction on apps that run in the background will prevent developers from coming up with tweaks to the operating system to improve on these things.

One of the many great things about Apple's beloved (still -- to many of us) Newton is that it is completely open. From the first minute, developers were looking under the hood and creating their own tweaks and shortcuts to make the machine more useable and more useful. Most of the thousands of apps developed (and still being developed) for Newton are of this sort -- not big programs, but little things that offer up improvements on what is already a great machine.

By blocking the ability to post apps that run in the background, Apple is effectively preventing developers from creating such improvements (eg, how about a keyboard that runs in landscape mode?). This is a big loss.