I’ve had iOS 4 installed on my now-obsolete iPhone 3G S since the day it was released. I’m glad that Apple and not AT&T sends out software updates for its phones, unlike many Android-based phones whose carriers decide when and which software upgrades are issued (most trailing by several months after Google updates Android). But I digress…

I really like the Folders features in iOS 4. I also like the Wallpaper on the home screens, and can forgive Apple for not letting us have individual wallpapers for each screen (and for not being able to choose no wallpaper on the home screens).

Here’s what I hate about iOS 4: Multitasking. This feature is a joke when compared to Palm’s webOS or Google’s Android. Sure, you can run the updated-for-iOS 4 Pandora app in the background, and that’s nice.

However, other apps don’t do what you expect while they’re in the background. I decided to start opening a few Web pages in Mobile Safari (a core app) in separate pages. That worked, but then I switched away to another app and returned to Safari, all those pages had to reload before I could read them. That isn’t multitasking.

Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s multitasking by saying if software makers have to use a task manager, they “blew it.” Well, Steve, iOS 4 never closes its apps. Yep, never. When you want to switch to that other app in the background, be ready to swipe through a lot of screens, because every single app you’ve opened (ever!) is in that list. Even apps that don’t support Apple’s narrow-minded multitasking APIs are all lined up down there. That’s not convenience, it’s clutter. Meanwhile, the same iPhone paradigm exists: Go in and then back out of each app. The look and feel is the same. The convenience of multitasking and quickly switching among them is obscured by the same old iPhone GUI.

I like iOS 4, for the most part. But its multitasking is not “multitasking done right,” it’s a poorly-designed mess.