iPhone is internet 1997

One of the things that just seems crazy to me is that the iPhone cannot run applications in the background. The iPhone developer site explains:

If you are running an application such as AOL Instant Messenger on your iPhone, everytime you receive a call or browse away from the application you would be signed out, you would lose any unread messages, and your conversations would end.

Watching Stephen Colbert last night, it hit me. The iPhone is the internet in 1997!