More Rumores of Background Processes, Possibly Coming in 3.0?

Silicon Alley Insider has picked up on some more rumors regarding Apple allowing background processes for a limited number of third-party developers. From what they've heard, there are two potential scenarios for handling the addition. The first would be to let users choose a select number of third-party apps to allow in the background. The second would be to let a select number of developers run processes in the background.

Back in February MacRumors stated that Apple was, in addition to supporting push notifications, planning to allow background processes after all.

Push notifications, which are coming in the next version of the iPhone OS, iPhone 3.0, are great for apps that would benefit from notices from a server such as chat and Twitter applications. However, there are still some apps, such as music applications, that could truly benefit from a background process.

So far Apple has limited background processes to its own applications due to their strain on battery life. Memory usage is also a large factor. The current iPhone has 128 MB of RAM, which barely works out for most apps. We've recently heard rumors that the next iPhone will have double the memory and a beefier CPU which would make it the perfect candidate for background processes.

John Gruber has also chimed in on the issue, discussing what he heard from one source at Macworld:

Ordinarily I wouldn’t link to something as sketchily sourced as this, but: I heard something very similar from a decent (but second-hand) source back in January during Macworld Expo. What I heard then was that Apple was working on a vastly improved dock for your most-frequently used apps, and that there’d be one special icon position where you could put a third-party app to enable it to run in the background. Take it with a grain of salt, though: my source in January described it as an idea Apple was working on, nothing more.

The major limiting factor right now is RAM. There just isn’t much left for third-party processes on the current hardware’s 128 MB.

At this point we're just waiting for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next month. Last year Apple used the opening keynote to announce the iPhone 3G. It's expected that Apple will discuss iPhone OS 3.0 as well as unveil some new details along with a new iPhone.