The iPhone SDK presentation sounded great, but they didn’t answer every question. They also didn’t mention some important details. Most importantly:
Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits.
This is one of the caveats explained in the 100 page iPhone Human Interface Guidelines PDF on the iPhone SDK website.
So what does this mean to the average non-programmer/layperson? Simply put:
If you are running an application such as AOL Instant Messenger on your iPhone, everytime you receive a call or browse away from the application you would be signed out, you would lose any unread messages, and your conversations would end.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
This design would tend to suggest that the application is running in a restricted sandbox.
Interestingly enough, today’s rogue iPhone native applications run just fine in the background. My bet is this is only a temporary issue.