Apple crippled the iPhone by not allowing multi-tasking of the non-primary apps.  I use SSH a lot and I don't want to close my session just to check my e-mail, etc, now an app found in Cydia called "Backgrounder" allows just that.

Although it's not perfect, we installed the correct one for "3.x" iPhones and hit "Reload SpringBoard" and the hour/circle glass has just been going for minutes.

It seems like it installed fine even with the crash that forced us to "hard power off" by holding the home key and power button.

How to use Backgrounder to multi-task

When you're in an app just hold the "Home" button for a few seconds and you'll see a screen that says "Backgrounding Enabled".  Now the app is still loaded in the background ready for you to return to it.

The author warns that if you have too many apps open and the OS runs out of memory, unpredicatble things may happen including forcefull killing of some processes.

How to disable Backgrounder

Just hold the Home button in the App that you enabled backgrounding for and you'll get a message which says "Background disabled"

This app works like a charm and really makes me happy, this relieves some frustration I was having with Apple's iPhone, especially at a time when most Linux based competitors like S60 phones, and the HTC Dream, and HTC Hero have native multi-tasking.

Apple should really thank the jailbreakers and app makers, otherwise I never would have bought iPhone.