Zenkitty,

you can do that now on the ipad and on an iphone and ipod touch. Technically, the iphone/touch/ipad has multi-tasking, just not with 3rd party apps.

You can play music through the Music app and surf the Internet or be in a number of other applications.

You can't watch video and do other things, but music has been done for awhile.

How come no Flash, you think?

Flash brings down mac OS in a spectacular way. It can slow down mac systems if you have flash open for awhile. Flash developers (reportedly) have refused to fix some of the memory leaks which degrades performance.

Really? I did not know that. I thought macs were invulnerable. (I've never owned one.) Well, in that case, Flash is probably right out.

I don't really know this personally, except for the serious slowdown Firefox experiences after awhile.

I installed ClickToFlash on my Mac. I rarely need to turn flash on. I'm mostly glad to be rid of the annoying ads.

Flash is not the best written nit of code. There are some much better ways to do video in web browsers and Apple is once again trying to force the issue and get the market to move to a new standard. Also Flash is controlled closely by Adobe and Apple doesn't like being beholden to another company.

Yeah, Flash is non-starter -- there's a whole little dance that's been going on since the first iPhone announcement that goes roughly like:

Tech Bloggers With No Actual Access To Information: It would be cool if it had every one on this whole list of features that Apple totally never said it was going to have. Like Flash!
Apple: We're never going to do Flash
Techbloggers: Apple is brilliant and godlike! Of course they'd never shoot themselves in the foot businesswise by releasing a device without Flash.
Apple: We're never going to do Flash
Techbloggers: Hey, watch me bump my hit count by starting a totally unfounded rumor that they're finally going to do Flash!
Apple: We're never going to do Flash
Techbloggers: OMG! I can't believe it has no Flash! I have this whole list of features that it really needs to have or else the device will suck!
Apple: t rakes in money from techbloggers

A camera is a matter of time. Flash just ain't gonna happen; it's not about it being something that they couldn't make work for the first release - they're seriously committed to making Flash not be the dominant thing it used to be, and they've been succeeding at it ever since they got YouTube on the non-Flash bandwagon with the first release. They have no reason to want to do it now.

So, you're saying, no Flash, then?

hahaha.