maybe you should consider that there might be a well-thought-out reason why they do it. Quite simply, if they let every third-party app have free access to the CPU, the battery would last about 10 minutes. The reason that lots of people are bitching about the battery life on the Pre: multitasking. There's a technical trade-off between CPU load and battery life. Considering that battery life for a mobile phone is an important consideration, I think Apple made the right decision to limit CPU access. Sure, you could build a bigger iPhone that had a replaceable battery and carry a bag of batteries around with you, but the compactness of the iPhone appeals to a lot of people.
Aside from the technical considerations, the functionality of Latitude, which allows the whole world to know where you are, strikes me as creepy.