In these days before Palm’s Pre smartphone finally arrives, fans of that brand-new device are airing gripes about the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t perfect by a long shot. Especially to those who don’t own one and can’t become an ATT customer here in the US. But even if you do use Apple’s mobile device to help run your business, you might wish for iPhone features like multiple programs running all at once.

These self-professed “power users” of smartphones will enjoy iPhone Hacks, the latest O’Reilly Press book that shows every iPhone user how to add features like multitasking to the phone. Smartphones such as the iPhone are the ultimate portable computer, at their hearts. iPhone Hacks shows you how to take command of your mobile computer, to become king of all that rests in your palm.

The advice in this book runs from understanding what Apple permits its everyday users all the way to modifying hardware inside the iPhone. Along the way this book, with its copious photos, screen shots and step-by-step guidance, tells users about “jailbreaking,” another word for “opening the iPhone or iPod Touch to customization.”When you call this step jailbreaking, you suggest something illegal and deadly. In truth, this book shows that jailbreaking is just the first step in customizing an iPhone. The only thing you’ll break is the narrow path of Apple’s proscribed use. Business owners who embrace Apple products love this narrow path, because Apple keeps you out of trouble by limiting what you can do.

But as iPhone Hacks shows, you can exceed those limits by taking command. Multitasking, accessing iPhone files from your desktop computer, or using the wider world of non-App Store programs, all are possible for the power user. They call the iPhone’s usual state a jail because you don’t want to live there if you’ve got faith in the 30-million-Phone/Touch community. The Web and its wizards get a lot of air time on these pages. Released in April of this year, iPhone Hacks shows you “how to make your iPhone your iPhone.”

As for being locked out of the latest Apple iPhone upgrades, there’s always a way back to that narrow path. This book shows how to customize an iPhone so the upgrades can be applied through iTunes even while your customization remains intact. Pwnage, a full-featured program, or the simpler QuickPwn get detailed here. Why would you want to do this? Well, you can trick your WiFi apps to work over 3G. That’s a current sticking point for the newest Slingbox App on the iPhone.

There are no guarantees that every side-stepping hack like the one above will work as you expect. (There’s a reason why slinging video from your cable box to a mobile device might deliver less than speedy results.) But the point of iPhone Hacks is to give you access to the iPhone’s command line: A part of computing most users don’t know how to use, even if they need it. With the ongoing help of the world’s iPhone users, this book not only shows what you can do, it teaches how to take that command.