Jobs announces iPhone/iPad updates

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad devices will soon be able to run more than one program at a time, an ability that phones from Apple's rivals already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.

The changes, coming this summer to iPhones and this fall to iPads, mean that users might be able to listen to CBC Radio app and check a bank account online simultaneously. Currently, users must return to Apple's home screen, effectively quitting the open program, before starting a new task.

“We weren't the first to this party, but we're going to be the best,” Apple AAPL-Q CEO Steve Jobs declared Thursday, as bloggers, software developers and others in the audience greeted the news of such “multitasking” with applause.

The iPhone already permits some multitasking, but that's largely limited to Apple's own programs. Apple had not given users ways to seamlessly switch among all the software “apps” available from outside software companies, the way phones from rivals Palm Inc. PALM-Q and Google Inc. GOOG-Q already do.

That will change with the updates known as iPhone OS 4. Apple generally makes such updates available for free, and often automatically, as a software download.