Apple addresses lack of iPhone background processes with "push notification"

When Apple initially announced the iPhone SDK, there was much dismay over the lack of background process capabilities, which disallows third-party applications to, for instance, notify the user of incoming instant messages or other network operations.

The company is now addressing this situation with what it calls a robust push architecture available to all third-party apps. This is an Apple-owned server that developers can access and use to push notifications to iPhone users.

Regarding the use of background processes, Apple's documentation still says:

"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 are using quits."

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