This is what drives me crazy about some iPhone owners. They haven't used a jailbroken iPhone, they haven't used a Pre, and they haven't used an HTC HD2. They claim that multitasking can't be implemented on the iPhone because it would either slow the iPhone down, or greatly diminish battery life. Well, I've used all these phones, and it's possible to multitask on a jailbroken iPhone without it slowing down, and without destroying battery life. Other phones listed above manage to implement true multitasking without sacrificing battery life. It IS possible to do it. Apple has some of the greatest engineering talent around. Are we supposed to believe that HTC or the former iPhone engineers at Palm can extend battery life but Apple can't? If Apple isn't implementing true multitasking, I can only assume it's because they don't want to for their own reasons.

During the demonstration, Scott Forstall indicated that apps in the background enter a "quiescent state, using no CPU" on the device. How is this multitasking? Apple is completely suspending any background apps, while allowing only specific background processes (local notification, location, audio, etc.) to run. For example, I'd like Tweetie to download tweets in the background, or NetNewsWire to download articles in the background. From the presentation, it looks like the only way this could occur in the background is for me to launch the app, manually begin downloading data, and then exit to some other app or the task manager. If those apps utilize the task completion feature in OS 4, they'll finish on their own. That's OK, but I'd much rather have them downloading that data at predetermined intervals, like a mail client does. If we had true multitasking, those apps would actually be running in the background, and could do this. On a totally unrelated note, how do we quit apps in the new task manager? Hold down the icon until we get an "x" in the upper left corner of the icon? I didn't see any differentiation in the presentation between switching and app and closing an app.

In fairness, we have been using Dells for our business for years, and we have several hundred of them. I wouldn't characterize them as junk.

Actually, Windows users are getting something OS X users aren't getting: malware. In addition, there are no viruses which affect OS X. That said, I much prefer Microsoft's approach to security compared to Apple's. Microsoft takes security seriously, Apple not so much.