Comment by jerf

Your question is unclear but I assume you are thinking that iOS has always supported "multitasking". This is not the case. iOS4 introduced it on the iPhone side, and this is how AnandTech [1] describes it:

"To switch between apps on the iOS3 you hit the home button, which takes you home, and then select your next app. Your previous app, assuming it isn’t one of a very limited list of apps that have services that can run in the background (e.g. iPod, checking email), quits completely. Switching back to the previous app relaunches it."

"In iOS 4 Apple promises app level multitasking without sacrificing performance or battery life. A single push of the home button still takes you home, but a double tap will bring up a list of recently used apps along the bottom of the screen. Scroll to find the one you want to switch to, select it and you’ve just “multitasked” in iOS 4."

Even on the Palm Pilot, you could switch reasonably quickly between, say, the Memo Pad and the Calendar, and not lose context in either app because they restarted. The OS was structured around giving apps the ability to freeze their state easily and rapidly thaw it later. I believe Android had some stuff for that, but it wasn't as comprehensive as what Palm had, and I can't speak to iOS APIs at all.

(In 2025, the "solution" to this is largely to just leave the apps running in the background like a desktop, now that cell phones are substantially more powerful today than the desktops of the WebOS era. Whether WebOS could have made a superior phone back in the day, we'd still be where we are today either way.)

[1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3779/apples-ios-4-explored/2