Think about why you use multitasking on a desktop or a laptop. The number one benefit is the ability to have multiple apps open in their current state so you can switch among them quickly and easily. But on a system where well-behaved apps restore their previous state when you open them, and where launching a new app is blazingly fast, this benefit evaporates.

At least in terms of this particular benefit, what's the practical difference between changing from one running app to another, and simply closing the app you're using and launching a new one instantly? With the iPad, If there's one thing most people seem to agree about, it's that this process of closing and opening apps is extremely quick and easy. 

In fact, many people don't know this (even iPhone developers), but the iPhone OS that is used by the iPad already supports a form of multitasking at the system level. App developers have a five second window when their app closes to do the extra work of preserving the app's state so it can be restored the next time you launch it. Well-behaved apps use this window to remember exactly where you were, along with any work you were doing or progress you made. 

Wonderfully, through the magic of multitasking, apps always appear to close immediately even though extra work is being performed. The five second window happens in the background. It's totally transparent to the user. For example, you can close our Simplenote app, and immediately start browsing the web to do some research for a blog post you're writing. Meanwhile, Simplenote is transparently syncing your recent work to the cloud.

This arrangement, along with a clipboard that is shared among apps, gives the iPad the number one benefit of multitasking, namely quick and easy task switching, without all the user interaction baggage.

Arguably, the number two benefit of multitasking is the ability to have secondary stuff going on in the background or on the side while you're busy doing something in the foreground. The most common use cases for this seem to be music and socializing.

The iPhone and iPad already let you play music in the background. People complain about not being able to use 3rd-party music services like Pandora, but that's more an issue of Apple's closed software rather than a lack of multitasking. Apple could easily open a music player API that lets other apps initiate background music playback.

Socializing is a more interesting case. This includes things like sending and receiving phone calls, instant messages, tweets, and voice chats while you're browsing the web or doing some work. I think a lot of people probably enjoy communicating with others while simultaneously watching YouTube, for example. This is a case where I think both the iPad itself and services like YouTube will continue to improve. People clearly want to interact while they consume media.

Even so, with devices this small and easy-to-use, multitasking in the physical sense isn't out of the question. You can message someone on your iPhone while you're writing a blog post on your iPad without too much trouble.

Also, do you remember when being "social" used to mean interacting with people face-to-face? Crazy, I know. I believe Apple is choosing to focus on a more traditional form of socializing with this first version of the iPad. Here is a device whose screen is specifically designed to be enjoyed by multiple people at different angles.

You can use it while casually sitting in your living room chair, or while in the kitchen preparing food, or while lying in bed with your knees up. In all of these situations, if you're as fortunate as I am, you're often with someone you care about. And when you're with someone you care about, multitasking has very little to do with running multiple apps. It has to do with enjoying drinks with your friends while laughing at a video on YouTube. It has to do with looking up a recipe while you cook for your family. It has to do with curling up with your partner while enjoying an episode of Big Bang Theory.

There's no doubt that the absence of general purpose multitasking on the iPad and iPhone is a very serious design restriction. It flies in the face of the "windows" metaphor we have all learned to love and hate. But there are countless examples of design restrictions like this whose imposed simplicity ends up stimulating very meaningful disruption. The result is innovation and elegance.

As Twitter survives without more than 140 characters, so too will the iPad without multitasking. I look forward to checking it out.

We often hear how fortunate we were to get a review from John Gruber on his popular blog, Daring Fireball. He loves Simplenote. And it's true: honest praise from influential people is extremely helpful. But exactly how helpful was his review? What did we do to earn his praise? And who are these Simplenote guys anyway?

Click to read more ...

It's modest, we know. But it's home. Some people want to know a little bit more about what goes on inside the Cloud Factory. How many people are there? What equipment is used? What's the person-to-robot ratio?

Well I suppose the first thing to clear up is that we're not an industrial factory, OK? We don't spew pollution into the air. No. On the contrary, have you seen our factory as depicted at the top of the page? Look at the pretty green trees. Find delight in how the sun is smiling at us. Share the jubilance of that happy cloud. They're all on our side.

So everything is OK, and our incidence rate of workplace cloud injury is extremely low. Clouds are usually not harmed, and very few become lost or otherwise dispersed. That's our business, you know. Making clouds. We invite you to read a little more about us!

We've dedicated a small corner of the factory floor to producing occasional cloud reports like this one. We hope you find them helpful or inspiring in some way. They won't usually be written by robots.