Recently, I jailbroke my iPhone.

There, I said it.

I fully expect black shirted, blue jeaned goons with an Apple logo on their lapel to break down my door. If you don’t hear from me after this, send lawyers, guns, and money to Cupertino. Or at the very least, my Apple ID to be revoked or something nasty like that.

That’s probably the worst thing about jailbreaking, the paranoia. That and the resistance to asking for support for apps. I’m afraid they’ll say, “you jailbroke your phone? Well of course our app won’t work then!”

For the record, I didn’t jailbreak my phone to unlock it. I’m perfectly happy with AT&T. I also didn’t jailbreak my phone so I could pirate software. Everything on my phone I got from the official App store, or one of the JB app stores (Rock, Cedia). I jailbroke it so I could have better access to it. I’m a UNIX geek, going back almost to the 70s, and while I knew the iPhone is running OSX (a variant of BSD UNIX), I don’t REALLY know that until I see a command prompt.

But the fact is, it’s been a wonderful experience. I like having far more control over my (yes, Apple, I said, “MY”) iPhone than Apple thinks I should. Before, I would have to go into preferences, then Wifi, to toggle wifi mode. Here, I just swipe the status bar, tap, tap, done.

And multitasking. Don’t get me started there. I’ve been doing multitasking on BSD UNIX computers since the Carter administration. And I haven’t checked, but I’m fairly sure the iPhone is a more powerful computer than the ones I used back then (okay, okay, I just checked. DEC VAX 11/750: 3.125 MHz, iPhone 3GS: 600 MHz (and yes, don’t complain to me about comparing apples and onions)). The iPhone already supports multitasking, it just doesn’t support 3rd party apps doing it. And it lacks any indication in the Springboard (iPhone’s app launcher) that an app is already running.

And having been around UNIX machines for so long, I know the dangers of multitasking. So, in the words of Brian Tong from CNET, I “use it wisely”. And in a way, I’d rather I didn’t have to. I only have one brain, and can only use one app at a time (and what separation I support can already be handled by the multitasking already in the iPhone (right brain enjoying the music on the iPod, while the left brain is doing other stuff)). But until all apps preserve your state perfectly, and are quick to launch, I do it, so I can go back and forth between apps without having 10 extra steps.

So why doesn’t Apple allow it?

I don’t think it would be that hard. One of the multitask managers I played with shows you a graphical screen, with each window being a separate app. It’s analogous to Safari and websites. And just like how Safari limits websites opened to 8 (if you open another one, it closes one of the others), there’s no reason why the multitask manager can’t limit you to, say, 8 apps. It’s not quite that simple (there are many apps that I wouldn’t want 8, or even 4 or 2 copies of running on my phone). But from a user interface point of view, it’s certainly not impossible.

So this now brings me to the iPad. As many have noted, it also doesn’t support multitasking (insofar as it has the same limitation on 3rd party apps that the iPhone has). That’s a more glaring deficiency, what with iWork and the prospect of it being a more useful device.

So, will I get an iPad? As it is now, no. Assuming I can afford it, I’ll get one if and when (a) it supports 3rd party multitasking apps, or (b) it can be jailbroken to do so. And even then, it’s a stretch. It’s much bigger than the iPhone, and doesn’t do much more. It’d be a nice sofa laptop (something you can surf the web with while you’re watching TV), but I couldn’t see leaving my laptop at home and bringing that instead.

Of course, having said that, if someone were to give me one, I wouldn’t say no. :)