The Pre's multitasking is going to be its downfall. I can't wait to see real world battery life, or when primary apps like the phone run out of ram and crash out.
I can't wait to see it in person just to try out how effective the card system of app switching is. Half of the iPhone apps I use don't start where they left off when I close them. People scoff at WebOS and HTML/CSS/Javascript apps but I think they will be surprised at just what they will be able to do. They will also have the benefit of being extremely light on resources. The total size of all the content required to display Apple.com is 426 KB - the HTML file itself is only 183 lines! iPhone OS 2.2.1 uses almost 50% of the available memory from right from boot-up.
I would love full multitasking support as much as the next person, but modern battery technology is just too far behind to support it I'm afraid.
Despite what Apple would have you believe, battery life is mainly affected by CPU and wireless signal usage - multitasking or not. Apple claims 5 hour battery life for calls/web browsing - both continuous CPU intensive tasks. Whether or not the CPU is being loading by one app or five, it is the same.
The current interpretation of multitasking on a computer is to have multiple applications running at the same time, equally sucking ram and slowing down the system. When you think about it, this is a pretty archaic way to run most applications, especially in terms of notifications.
Why is it archaic? Here I am running MS Excel (9-sheet file), MS Word (3 page document), and Hulu.com, Apple.com, and Macrumors.com in Firefox using a combined 128 MB of memory - the total amount of RAM in the iPhone. I do agree that having to run multiple apps for notifications would be silly, but that is not what we are talking about with multitasking.
...Apple was forced to develop something that makes far more sense in a mobile context. You're always connected, you need applications to push to the phone, so you build a scalable server that can manage push, and in so doing you save ram and battery life. This is a sensible approach to mobile multitasking - running multiple apps all the time really isn't.
The Push system is only suitable for certain types of apps, but it's not very useful for the majority. Any developer that wants to use this as a mutlitasking alternative also has to run their own infrastructure to support it.
"Saving RAM" is non-sensical. You lose nothing by using available memory. In fact, the argument for using as little RAM as possible is actually in support of multitasking. As far as battery life is concerned,
motulist probably said it best when he said, "Writing the same amount of data to disk takes a lot more juice than writing it to solid state memory. So in the real world adding ram will reduce overall battery consumption in all except the most unusual of circumstances."
The concept of multitasking is not running multiple apps
all the time. Perhaps this is the root of all your difficulties with multitasking. In any case, Push is hardly a suitable substitute to multitasking, but it is a solution to a few notification problems, at least.
Have you ever seen people waiting in line for 10 hours to get a phone all across the country even a week after launch?
Have you ever heard of Tickle Me Elmo? Pogs? Razor scooters? Tamagotchi? Beanie Babies? If not, then you'll get my point. They are fads: consumers get hyped up and do things like waiting in line all night to buy. It's somewhat of a social phenomenon that relates little to the merits of the product. The hype eventually dies down and gets forgotten - which isn't to say that no one buys Elmo dolls anymore (or won't still buy the iPhone).
