iPhone multi-tasking concept borrows heavily from webOS

[ youtube link ]

If you thought the activity cards metaphor used to manage multitasking on webOS was unique, think again, as it could very easily be looked at as an extension of Apple’s iTunes-originated Cover Flow. While we do fully believe that webOS was not developed with an eye on the less-than-spectacular iTunes interface, there’s no denying the flipping through items aspect that bridges Cover Flow and webOS.

With Cover Flow already a part of the music app on the iPhone, it seems like an only logical step to extend it to handle multitasking apps in a similar manner to webOS, as Ocean Observations thought. In fact, with the exception of the Coverflow Interface and ringed app icons, the whole affair is remarkably similar to that of webOS, right down to dragging/tossing apps off the browser to close them. While we as webOS supporters rather like the concept and find it very familiar, we’d like to think that if Apple were to pursue multitasking on the iPhone that they’d take it in a direction all their own. The iPhone OS is quite intuitive, so let’s not muddy the waters by stealing concepts from your [perceived] strongest competitor.

[via: Mobile Crunch, via: The iPhone Blog]