#FF00AA

Those familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 said that the user interface will resemble Apple’s desktop Expose feature, in that a key combination — reportedly hitting the Home button twice — will trigger an expose-like interface that brings up a series of icons representing the currently running apps, allowing users to quickly select the one they want to switch to directly. When a selection is made, the iPhone OS zooms out of the Expose task manager and transitions to that app.

I expected something more complex — such as letting apps start specific background processes that wouldn’t be allowed to interact with the interface. This description looks nicer, sure (although there ought to be interesting advantages to my idea), but the reason I’m nonplussed about the concept is that there’s no way it will be available for my old iPhone 3G: not enough RAM and CPU.

But then, there’s always the possibility that OS 4.0 could be completely unavailable to older iPhones anyway.