FINALLY! Multitasking comes to the iPhone!

Apple has finally added multitasking, and so much more, to the iPhone OS. Ars Technica reports all the details. The highlights:

– Multitasking using the home button. While I was wrong about only one app being allowed, I was right about the home button being the primary interface. This sounds fantastic. Audio apps can even use the previously iPod only pop up controls. There are only ways for apps to “run” in the background. For location based apps, they can be woken up when positions change. For games, they can “pause” and be idle.

– Folders on the home screen. Another welcome addition. Instead of managing pages upon pages of unorganized apps, they can be put inside a folder. I can already see this for less used apps and games.

– Unified inbox in Mail. Yet another FINALLY. It will make it so much easier to manage more than one account.

Some of the other things are interesting too. Game Center will be great for game developers- a kid of XBox Live system. iAd will be wonderful as adding advertising can be a pain. And the enterprise features are awesome- especially the remote installing of apps.

A good update. I was hoping for some sort of printing option though. Maybe that will come later.

One final note- if you install the 4.0 release on an iPhone, MobileMe’s tracking system will not work. I don’t know why, but it won’t. Hopefully that will be fixed for beta 2.