Strangely, the patent picture shows the iPad running what looks like OS X (the thought that Mac OS could come to the iPad isn't crazy, but that's for another story) and allowing users to place different open applications in different spaces, just as one does on their Mac. Spaces still appears in OS X Lion, alongside the new Mission Control feature. The picture also implies that users would use specific gestures to move applications into different spaces, and to maneuver from space to space.
This is an area I feel that Apple could improve on in iOS, particularly on theipad2 accessories. Android already has this ability to an extent, where a home screen page can be a user-defined running application, such as a calendar, mail, or clock app. With the current multitasking implementation in iOS 4, this is not possible. It may be that ipad 2 keyboard will enhance these capabilities in iOS 5, which should be unveiled very soon.
Also, it should be noted that this patent was filed quite a while ago, sometime in the third quarter of 2009, before the ipad 2 stand was ever released, so this patent may never come to fruition at all. But it's still possible we could see this implemented in future versions of iOS. We'll certainly learn what the iPad 2 TPU Cases future of the OS has in store at WWDC in June.
