Yeah, it could be better.

Perhaps the biggest reason to allow multitasking on iPhone OS — for me, at least — is to allow media apps like Pandora or Last.fm to continue playing while you’re messing about in other apps. Honestly, when I try to come up with other reasons to allow multitasking, I have great difficulty coming up with scenarios that can’t (can’t) be solved with push notifications. Of course, the push notification service could potentially be improved to provide greater value and potential, but still: multitasking doesn’t seem to be necessary.

Now, in terms of media apps like Pandora and Last.fm, I got to thinking: would it be possible to introduce a new type of app that is simply a plugin for iPod.app? Imagine, if you will, if Pandora were made available as another listing on the “More…” screen. Start up the streaming from within iPod.app, and you can go play in other apps to your heart’s content. Or, if Last.fm is more your thing, you could stream your music the same way, through the plugin in iPod.app; or, if you want to play your own on-board music, you could turn on scrobbling, which would also continue to happen in the background.

Now, I know this suggestion is a pretty big break from iPhone interface convention. Currently, the iPhone OS and the AppStore are built on the premise of “one app, one icon.” So, my recommendation would mean that, after downloading Pandora to your device, you would not see a new icon on the Springboard. But I do think that this sort of expansion of the core OS could be a very good idea for everyone.

Perhaps it’s just my enthusiasm for the iPad, and the various UI differences that it brings. Largely, this idea came to me when I realized what a waste of space the Pandora app would be on the iPad. I’m quite anxious to see what types of innovation the iPad helps to spur in the iPhone/iPod Touch OS, since they are — at least in some sense — competitors in the market.

One would imagine that this post should be wrapped into my multitasking post from the other day, but I felt it necessary for this point to stand on its own:

If, by some strange chance, Apple finally allows us to multitask in the next major release of iPhone OS, I urge every currently-published developer to really take a moment to assess what it will mean to their revenue stream as it currently exists.

As an example, let’s take Pandora. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just fire up Pandora, exit the app, and go browse through NetNewsWire? Well sure, it would be fantastic for the end user, but I can easily see how Pandora’s advertising revenue would go directly through the floor. Same thing with NetNewsWire: if you can leave it running all the time, downloading your feeds in the background, that will dramatically decrease the amount of face-time each user gets with those ads.

Now, I’m not suggesting that this is a Bad Thing. Clearly, the platform needs to evolve enough to allow some form of multitasking, and I even think the “blessed apps” model could be the perfect solution. But the problem, really, is that there are several new types of “economies” that have sprung up from within the confines of this platform. And when you change a fundamental operating structure of said platform, it is bound to have consequences to those economies — some predictable, and others unpredictable.

We’ve seen this type of thing before, with the ongoing complications that arose from the initially-forbidden-and-later-granted ability for paid upgrades from within an app. Those problems were less about screwing up revenue streams for the developer, and more about maintaining a consistent business relationship with the end-user, but the basic problem is quite the same: when you fail to implement a certain facet of your OS in the most logical way, from the get-go, there will be consequences, either for the developer or the consumer.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m not one to hop onto the hot-button topics. I just don’t see the point. Why state what’s obvious to everyone?

But, in the case of multitasking on the iPhone, I’ve felt for quite a while now that nobody is really putting a finger on what multitasking could mean for the iPhone, were it to show up tomorrow. And I think a large part of that is because everyone knows the core iPhone apps so well, at this point, that there is no real novel way to look at the problem. People try to sell us on the idea of multitasking by pointing at the Jailbreak community, but seriously: HIC SVNT DRACONES.

But today, I had a pretty nice revelation: there is a hidden multitaskable app on the iPhone 3GS, which I’ve known was there all along, yet never had any interest in using. It’s the Nike+ app, and it is switched off in Settings.app by default. The problem is, without investing in the dongle, you’ll never get a chance to see how excellent and unique this app is.

Lately, I had gotten myself involved in using RunKeeper Pro, after having bought it nearly a year ago in a flash of wishful thinking. Everything was going wonderfully, until one day I had a minor problem with one of RunKeeper’s features. I eventually got it solved, but that moment of uncertainty made my eyes wander. I looked on CraigsList for a used Nike+ kit, and I googled around for some first-hand comparisons. I’m no dummy: just because Nike+ has been around longer and is much more widely-accepted, doesn’t mean it’s actually a better tool for the job. I’ll leave it at that, as this isn’t an app review blog.

So, while looking through the Nike+ config panel in Settings.app, and in reading Apple’s knowledge base article on Nike+, I was reminded of the fact that this app has access to the contents of the lockscreen while the iPhone is asleep — similar to what iPod.app does, but there’s a major difference. With Nike+, if the screen is asleep and you click the home button, the custom workout screen is displayed, and your current run stats are recited to you, over your music (if it’s playing). This stats screen will be there even if you have exited the Nike+ app, since it is a multitasking app. So, the take-away is that, when the screen is asleep, the user is given the option to send a function call to the Nike+ app by pressing the home button once, even if the app isn’t running in the foreground. This is unique to only this app on iPhone. The only comparable lock-screen functionality I can think of is the double-tap for iPod controls — which, incidentally, still work while the Nike+ lockscreen is active, but the layout of the controls is seamlessly integrated into a modified Nike+ lockscreen.

Also, similar to the “call in progress” (green) and “tethering is active” (blue) banners, Nike+ has its own banner (red) when it’s active in the background. When you take a phone call, the red banner is replaced with green, and the workout is paused. I believe the same is also true when a call comes in and you’re tethering, but the tethering does not disconnect. So, as a UI guideline, there is only one pulsating banner at the top of the iPhone screen at any given time.

Anyway, it’s been mentioned once or twice lately — on at least one blog (yeah, I’m taking it all with huge grains of salt) — that we could potentially see “rationed multitasking” in whatever forthcoming iPhone OS release we may see this year. If that’s the case, I sincerely hope that an updated SDK will allow third-party developers to manipulate the lockscreen (and its home button behavior) and “announcement banners” (for lack of a better term). Because, as much as I kinda prefer RunKeeper over Nike+ as a runner’s service, I’m thoroughly impressed with the OS-level integration that comes from this quasi-third-party app. And it’s kind of exciting that its impressiveness has been hiding directly under my nose.

Also, just as an afterthought: Even though the Nike+ app is technically not deletable, it’s super-nice that we can just flip a switch in Settings.app if we want it to be gone from the home screen. Technically, the same can be done for Safari, iTunes, AppStore and YouTube, via Restrictions. But it would be really nice if every non-deletable app had a similar switch within the Restrictions panel.