Phil Wolff does a great job discussing why the iPhone's lack of background processing is bad. Bad for p2p apps, bad for users, bad for developer and everyone but Apple. Frankly I haven't spent time analyzing how the iPhone processes things in the background or foreground but I can tell you that lack of background processing is terrible from a user perspective as it reduces productivity. Yes you gain battery life but this does not seem like a solution which will make the iPhone as useful as possible for the business community.

I don't want to jump to any conclusions mind you and we should wait to see how iPhone apps behave in the real world as time goes on.