I think that in some ways the general trend has been toward you working for your computer instead of your computer working for you. Personally, I get a lot done during the day that I don't even have to think about because I put a little bit of time into setting up some cron scripts a long time ago. I still count that toward things I'm getting done. Without being able to background apps, it's something that's seriously missing from iOS (please correct me if I'm wrong).