iPhone 4.0 – the radio killer…. one of the major limitations of the iPhone/iTouch/iPad is that the only way you can have it streaming music or radio in the background is in quicktime, and that requires locking down the Safari browser on the Quicktime page. That’s a serious limitation
Apple’s 4.0 OS, due this summer will change that – it will allow audio apps to run in the background, and is currently working with Pandora to feature Pandora’s background music when 4.0 is released. But it won’t be just Pandora – it could be podcast apps like Stitcher to offer on-demand content with minimal commercials and a fast forward capability.
Another problem with background playing is some apps insist on grabbing the audio output to play their sounds. Back in the really old days of Windoze, only one program at a time could create sound, which was a big limitation – but they quickly figured out how to create a “mixer” to merge multiple sound inputs into a single hardware device. Hopefully Apple will educate app developers to not grab the audio exclusively (I don’t know the technical details of why some apps do and some don’t)
