Earlier today, Apple sent out an email (embedded below) to developers who are testing the latest iPhone 3.0 software, asking them to help do one final stress test the new Push Notification service. The app picked for this test was AOL’s AIM instant messaging application, which makes sense given that IM apps are likely to be the apps that end up using Push Notification the most.
Push Notification, for those who haven’t been following news about it for the past year, is the system Apple developed to alleviate the fact that it won’t allow third party apps to run in the background of the iPhone. Apple claims there are security concerns, battery life concerns and performance concerns that prevent background apps from being feasible at this time on the iPhone (though the company is considering ways to do background apps in the future). Instead, it has asked developers to use its servers to push out certain tasks (like IMs) that come to your phone even when that application isn’t running.
Apple first talked about Push Notification a year ago at WWDC, and said it should be available around September of 2008. When that deadline came and went, Apple was largely silent, only remarking briefly that the system wasn’t yet ready and it wanted to make sure it was perfect before rolling it out. A smart move considering the rough start its MobileMe service go off to. So we waited and waited, until finally Apple announced that it would be a part of the iPhone 3.0 software, due out June 17.
Watch the video below to see Push Notification in action with AIM. One quick note: The video makes it look like there may be a delay between an IM sent and received, but I’m told it’s basically instantaneous — under a second.
[thanks Kyle]
Very cool. How bad was the delay between IM sent and IM received?
Under a second
Less than a second from what I hear. The video makes it appear that it could be longer, but it’s not.
I hope you’re right. It sounded like the guy in the video hit ‘enter’ on his computer (where I assumed he’d pre-typed his message) about a second after putting the phone down. The message arrived just over 15 seconds later.
If that’s how the notification system works when Apple’s servers aren’t being pounded with a few million per hour, I shudder to think how functional this will be when it goes live.
No, the message you hear being sent is to MG to send the test message that got shown in the video. It took him a few seconds to get that, type the one he sent, and send it. The notification showed up right away. A few minutes after this video was shot I tested it again with my own account and it came as soon as I hit “Enter”.
Yes, I was involved in the making of this video.
Updated the post with that info.
I cannot wait for this next week. I’m skeptical about how they’ll be able to handle the load though.
Awesome, that would work perfectly for http://pagerdut...singfeature.com when I get to making an iPhone app. Would definitely save on SMS costs!
Hmm, looks usable. Still think true background processing is better. Also, nice cat.
Yeah, this is really weak compared to the Pre or Android. The real problem will be when you’re doing other things and it takes 5 seconds every time you need to switch into and out of the AIM app to reply.
It’s not exactly a nice feature, more like an OK workaround. Pointless when you think about it, because the iPhone will need to be doing multitasking within a year or it’s going to get left in the dust. Either way, it was stupid of them to come up with such a sort-term fix for a long-term problem.
So, just out of curiosity, you’d like… what? Even backgrounded, apps will need to be switched to for use. Unless you’re saying that, say, an IM should just pop up when I’m in the middle of a high scoring game of Monkeyball, ruining my concentration and possibly screwing up my play?
Not sure how “true backgrounding” would be really any different from push in this case – especially with IM, where you would get the message, then converse entirely in that app, then pop over to whatever when the convo was complete.
The beauty of push is that it DOES solve a long-term problem: battery life/power usage. The Pre and Android phones are the ones who use the “workaround” of backgrounding in order to keep apps alive, at the cost of battery life, since those apps must then remain online, forcing the 3G/Wifi/etc on full time.
Me, I’d rather have the battery life! And a new high score in Monkeyball.
Well if the phone could truly background apps you could dismiss the notification or switch out of monkeyball, respond and then return to the paused game. Also, aside from the background issue this notifications blows – why have it pop up on top of everything else? Instead of breaking up just monkeyball it appears that it will interrupt everything! It is shocking how much more elegant android and the pre handle this.
hehehe, you miss windows mobile in that little list there at the end.
I see….so if you’re streaming a 20 minute video and you’re halfway through and an important message comes in that you must respond to. what happends then? with the “beauty” of your push notification you will have to close the video streaming app then open your messaging app….then after you respond to the message you will have to start the stream all over again. that’s beautiful to you right? its not to me.
Good luck completing that game of Monkeyball with the giant pop-up in the middle of the screen, obstructing your view of the game. The Pre has the notification thing handled perfectly, and Apple should steal that.
Switching back and forth between two, concurrently running applications with a single flick (the way you can on a Pre), is much faster than pressing the home button, paging around to find the icon you want, waiting for that app to launch (which takes forever if it’s SMS on the iPhone), only to have to repeat the process again, in reverse to get to what you were doing previously.
No, multitasking is not a problem, it’s a feature. It’s the reason that smartphones exist. Imagine being able to listen to Pandora AND reply to a text message AT THE SAME TIME. Is this some crazy, futuristic communication device? Hardly, it’s… every other smartphone in the world EXCEPT the iPhone.
Sure, multitasking uses slightly more power, but it’s also much more useful. What good is an all-in-one music player/GPS-enabled/internet communicator, if you can only use one of those features at a time? The battery isn’t there to be saved, it’s there to be used as you see fit. Sure, if you use it hard you’ll have to plug in more frequently or carry a spare battery around, but isn’t that worth the convenience of carrying one device that can do it all, and all at once?
I understand that running one application at a time will yield better battery-life. I understand why that may be an acceptable compromise for some people. I dealt with it for a year because the iPhone still provided a better experience than you could get on other devices. However, now that there are other viable platforms that offer more flexibility than the iPhone, Apple should really think about giving people the option to use their own phones however they choose, instead of the way Apple thinks they should.
I think you forgot that iphones can swapt batteries…..
can’t**
Super Monkey Ball Pauses when a text come through. I assume this is the same. BTW i really think the battery save is worth it
It’s an interesting solution, and I think it’s probably the best you’ll get from Apple until the iPhone 3G SF (Super Fast) next year. Apple has convinced the world that you can’t do background apps without killing a battery, but WinMO, Symbian, and BlackBerry have been doing it for years pretty well (treos too). With that said, none of them give the UI or UX of the iPhone – but we’re seeing some catchup with Pre and Cupcake, and I believe software updates can help the power management.
The beef I have with push notification is that you still have to close down the program you’re in, and then launch a new app for something that may take 5 seconds to respond to (like mobile IM). I mean, this is 2009, is it really that hard to have IM in the background on a phone? I’d even be okay with Apple creating its own “iPhone messenger” a la BlackBerry that can only do background IM with other iPhone users.
That’s why they’re coming out with new, more powerful iPhones! It’s so they can support new stuff like this.
My phone is jailbroken and I’ve been using backgrounder to run apps in the background for months and have not had any problems whatsoever. Granted, the battery does drain a bit faster, but I usually use it to background pandora when I’m on the road.
Nothing is more annoying when a message pop-ups just as you are in the middle of doing something else. This is not just the iPhone, but the prime example is GMail. When you are trying to reply to a message in Trash, a freaking message pops up just as you type.
Annoying pop-up windows suck, can you turn this off in the iPhone?
Pre and Android got this right.
You can turn it off, but then you won’t get any notifications. Sort of defeats the purpose. Apple just needs a better way of handling notifications and app-switching.
You can turn it off and still get notifications. You can turn Alerts, Sounds, and Badges on or off on an App-by-App basis. So if you don’t want any alerts to appear, but still hear a custom alert sound, you can do that. Or, if you only want alerts from one App, and only want sounds from another, and only badges on another, you can do that, too.
“Apple claims there are security concerns, battery life concerns and performance concerns”
Really Apple? Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Mobile and many others have been doing it for years.
I love how apple releases years old tech and everyone starts going crazy for it.
Background apps WOW video camera on phone WOW mms OMGAPPLEISSOAWESOME!!!111
I’m sorry, the push notifications look so 2005 compared to the Palm Pre’s notification system. Yuck.
I like the sounds and badges that will be available more than the pop up or whatever you want to call what was in that video. With a sound, at least you could stay in whatever application you’re currently using but know that you have something new in another one.
this sounds and badges without the popup is a 2x worse implementation…..I’ll leave you to think about it…make sure you think about it hard too, because it seems it passed over your head a long time now.
Trollcat again shares opinion of iPhone announcements.
http://trollcat...ngled-sedative/
I have a question….if you’re streaming music in the background and the screen locks while streaming and a push notification comes in and you slide to open and it auto goes to the app which sends the notification…what happens to the streaming app that you were listening to? does it shutdown? I don’t see a dismiss or ok button like in windows mobile when a notification comes in. can someone please answer that question for me?
just puch the sleep button, and it will dismiss it
I got that email too. Downloaded the app; pretty cool.
The push notifications seemed to be the same speed as anything else. Slight delay of course, but pretty much identical to that of receiving an text message.
could you check answer my above question please? it’s right above your post.
So underwhelming.
This is something that should have already existed on the 3G from the start.
Just like copy & paste, video cam, etc.
Apple released 3G-light last year so they could just repack & resell it as 3GS 12 months down the road.
This 3.0 bullshit firmware update is just to assuage all the “early” adopters (perhaps “lemmings” is more fitting) so they’ll buy the 3GS-X when it hits the shelves for Christmas.
Full disclosure: I am a lemming.
I tested this on the original iPhone, and I couldn’t receive incoming calls or make outgoing calls. Even after disabling Push Services, still the same issue. I had to restart the phone to get calling back. Any call to the phone went directly to voicemail.
Push services is cool, but if I cancel and alert, don;t keep allowing them to flood to my phone, thats spam. See 1, then it;s on me to go to the app. once i do, i get another when i exit the app when a new notification come through.
Iv’e found exactly the same thing in 1st gen iPhone.
When push notification is on, if you put it next to a speaker you can hear it talking to the network constantly. I could make outgoing call but not recieve incoming calls, even when you slide push notifications off, you can hear it still trying to connect to the cell network and still not recieve calls. Major Bug.
Sure it’s not polling?
amazing article, totally loved it! =D
So will OS 3 screw up my phone, I’m one of those people that still have an original iPhone?
No iPhone OS 3.0 won’t screw up your phone. Works fine, I’ve seen a few odd things here or there, but nothing that caused a big problem before my issues with the push services. ˆˆ
So, do you appear online to the other users?
Yes.
iPhone notification system is primitive compared with Pre/android. I HOPE devs start adding support for GriP (growl for iPhone) on their apps
Okay it’s June 18th now and this still isn’t working.. when??
Question: When you get the notification, is that considered a text message and therefore counted against your text messageplan you have with AT&T?
Is this meant to be working now? I received an AIM update last night and downloaded it; however my messages are not being pushed after I close the app. Am I missing something?
every message is coming up on my phone, even when i’m at the computer. how can i stop this madness?
Cool, I just tried it out on my phone and it works well. I am kind of afraid it will drain my battery life to the max, so I probably will not keep the push notification on at all times.