^^^
All of us want background processes on the iPhone but for an alarm clock that must be on when you're sleeping (and so your device is not used) seems not necessary to me.
In my opinion, in this case, background processes are useless if nightstand mode is used, could be useful but not necessary when nightstand mode is not used.
IMO such an app should never need background process. It`ll only be a waste of your iPhone battery if anything. What it does need is some APIs from apple which will allow such apps for alarm/reminders/calendars to be able to turn on and do the task assigned at a pre determined time. Apple might as well add this functionality with the current Calendar(or even Clock) app only, where all such apps just put a reminder in the calendar app(where these reminders are not visible to the user in the calendar app), which in turn will prompt the app to start up and do its business whenever the app requests it to. This way the job will be done without any more processing power required than what the iPhone is already using.
Also, to keep things smooth they can opt for two sorts of actions. -
1)If the iPhone is in use at the time when some app requested to be turned on, the calender should just pop up a message(like the push notifs or SMS) reminding the user about that app and giving the option to start the app or cancel it.
2)In case the iphone is not in use at the time of reminder then app should be turned on and let it do its business (like an alarm) the screen should be turned on with app in the back ground with the "slide to unlock" option on the screen. They can add automatic snooze if the user doesnt stop the process himself.
What I`ve suggested is just one solution. There could be so many ways it can be done without compromising any battery life. But apple wouldnt do it mainly coz.... they are Apple. Look how long copy paste took to arrive. I agree they`ve done an excellent job with it and exceeded my expectations when I first saw it in the 3.0 Preview. And it really is good. But taking more than two years for such a basic function is a bit too much.
Please note- I dont have any idea why I drifted from the main topic and started discussing iPhone vs Netbooks here. I simply forgot 
. I know I had something in my mind and BAM. Theres nothing. It actually felt like waking up in the middle of nowhere and having no idea how you got there. I admit my memory is not good but this has never happened. Do I need help/therapy/medication. Read ahead if you wish but please remeber it has nothing to do with the Original Post. PM me if you wish to to share your thoughts about this with me. I wish I was a non vegetarian, atleast then I could blame it on MAD COW like danny crane. Heres what I typed after the previous paragraph
"BTW All those who were saying that they have copy paste on blackberrys/winmos/otherCrap for years but never found any real use for it were wrong. I never thought I`d use the copy paste much, may be occasionally at best, found out how much I`ve used it in past two days. The iPhone Safari is now another step closer to the PC. With the addition of this basic feature the iPhone/iPT are not too far behind the netbooks for a big majority of people. Yes it might not be able to do half the things what a cheapo netbook might be able to do but the other half which its capable of doing is what netbook users do with their more than 80% of the times. A lil browsing, checking social networking sites, email, VOIP, edit or create some docs, may be watch a video or two. iPhone is capable of doing all those(as much as it`s tiny 3.5" screen will allow it to). "
And at this point I woke up. No idea why I typed all this but one thing I m sure is that there was a point I wanted to make here but now I have no idea what that point was. Hopefully it`ll strike my mind again within a day or two when I least expect it. I`ll update u if that happens in a new thread.
