iOS – What Did iOS Do Before Multitasking?

You may be worrying more than you need to be. Apps can only use multitasking for certain functions:

• Playing audio
• Tracking your location
• VOIP
• Local notifications and alerts
• Complete a lengthy operation

In all cases, rather than the app remaining running, the system keeps it suspended and awakens it at appropriate times, such as when it needs to fetch more audio. If the app uses too much CPU while it's in the background, it gets terminated. If the foreground app needs more memory, then the background apps will get terminated as necessary.

The apps in the multitasking menu aren't necessarily consuming any resources or battery life, it's more like a "most recently used" list. Apps will still be listed there whether or not they are actually running. You can help prove this to yourself by turning the phone off and on; the recent list will still be populated even though obviously all the apps are terminated.

Both the latest Xcode 3 and the latest Xcode 4 allow you to mark an iPad with the latest 4.3.x as being "used for development". You can cancel if asked for your developer program credentials (which cost $99) and still have access to the gesture switch on the iPad.

Xcode 4 is only available presently as a $5 download from the Mac App store or with the $99 paid Mac Developer program as a restricted download. The free developer account (which still allows you to get Xcode 3) is fairly painless to set up as long as you can agree to all the conditions. You can see the various free and paid programs at http://developer.apple.com/programs/which-program/ - it used to be simpler but the free account is still fairly powerful but not on the cutting edge with pre-release

As with anything that is in software development, all things subject to change often and YMMV.