OK, I agree about the filestore, although anything you do that takes more than one app is possibly outside the remit of such a device. Certainly I would say that is true of the iPhone though admittedly less so of the iPad.

As for background apps, what music won't iTunes play? I'm still really at a loss about this "it won't multitask" lark. The kinds of things I multitask on my desktop are video conversion, downloads, and maybe leaving things like Tweetie open. But I don't do video conversion on the go, downloads DO run in the background on the iPhone and it barely takes a moment to shut down whatever app and open Tweetie - which has full retention of where you left off. Maybe that latter point is what is missing from the apps you use?

The fact is you only have one mouse, one keyboard. And on the iPad, OK TWO hands, but really one set of fingers and certainly only one brain.