Writing a background task for Touch OS X would be very, very hard. Well, actually, not so much hard as taking a lot of skill, time and effort. I can really understand why Apple wouldn’t want just anyone doing it. But before I get too stressed over it, it’s worth asking a few questions:

First, what kind of program does this actually affect? Not many, probably. In fact, basically, polling network software or network software that receives pushes is the most common scenario. ((Time-based software is also a possibility, but let’s discard that for the moment.)) An instant messenger program is an obvious example; it needs to keep the connection alive and plays some sort of beep when a message comes in.

So we’ve established a program this affects. Now it’s worth asking a second question: Is it possible this rule is up for negotiation? At the right price, would it go away? And if so, what might the right price be?

1. An application that background operation is critical to.
2. An application that Apple thinks is important enough to be worth the resources on the iPhone and the effort. Because make no mistake, it’s going to take effort from Apple.
3. Doing the work on campus with an Apple engineer’s help.
4. Payment for the engineer, possibly to be waived in some cases.

In short, if I was to write a program that beeped on the hour, I probably wouldn’t get an exception. I wouldn’t even know who to ask. But AOL Instant Messenger? That might happen. AOL might not even have to ask. ((Although I doubt they have anything running in the background at this point. For the purposes of a prototype/demo, a simple, customized back end would make more sense.))

In short, as developers we need to worry more about we are going to do, than what someone like AOL is going to do.