Sometime soon, Facebook 3.03 for the iPhone will be available in the App Store. It should be a small update with some bug fixes. The bigger news is what will be coming soon after it: Facebook 3.1 for the iPhone, complete with Push Notifications.
While we’ve long suspected that this would be a feature in the next major iteration, developer Joe Hewitt confirmed it tonight on Twitter. And that feature will make what is already one of the best iPhone apps out there, even better. The lack of Push Notifications is probably the biggest complaint users have about the app, right now.
Facebook with Push Notifications could be significant in another way as well: It could well be the most popular app people are using with the functionality. Why that matters is that it could start showing everyone what some of us iPhone power users have realized for a while: The Push Notification management system beyond a certain threshold is basically useless. That is to say, when you’re getting a large number of Push Notifications on your iPhone, it’s almost laughable how bad the built-in system is for trying to figure out what you just got notified about beyond the most recent message.
That’s why Boxcar, a Push Notification app, is so great, it has a main dashboard where you can see a full list of your recent Push Notifications. I realize that I’m hardly representative of the average user, but I often find myself looking over this list after a few days, and there are a couple thousand Push messages accumulated. But sadly, this only works for notifications run through Boxcar. So if you have say, a notification from Foursquare, one from AIM, and one from BNO News, none of those will be in that list.
Boxcar (which also already does Facebook notifications, by the way) also doesn’t solve the issue of smartly displaying various kinds of messages on your main screen when they come in. For example, if I have a text message that comes in, but a Push Notification after it, the Push message will override the text message, so I will not know I have a text at all unless I unlock my phone and look at the Messages app.
There also badly needs to be a universal “quiet time” setting, when no Push Notification are sent to your phone. Several apps are starting to build this in, but that’s just more management for users to deal with on an app-by-app basis; it really should be a universal system setting.
The Push system is such a mess right now, that many of the most popular developers are letting others deal with it. Loren Brichter, the guy behind the excellent Twitter app Tweetie, tells us that he’s tabled Push Notifications for the time being, letting others like Boxcar handle it, because it’s a potential headache.
With iTunes 9, Apple completely revamped the way to organize and manage apps on your computer. It was a much needed, and welcomed change. The next step is to completely revamp the Push Notification management system. And I think Facebook with Push Notifications will go a long way in highlighting that need.
Woot! updates are good… didn’t pay extra for the boxcar update either so push will be cool… as long as I can turn it off in options
Right .. as long as we can turn it off …
Best,
Daina
I have a couple of push apps going. With boxcar dealing with Twitter and facebook and pushmail for my emails. So push for facebook is not so exciting. In fact it makes boxcar almost obsolete (as I can also use echofon for my twitter push). However I do find apps built with only push in mind tend to be a little better. With history and the like. Also it doesn’t tie u into a specific program to access the service (such as echofon – I like switching between it and tweetie)
HOWEVER I’m hoping the facebook bug fixes includes the time problem where ppl who aren’t in US timezones get ALL their time displayed wrongly – events are the most annoying
They don’t just need to revamp the push notifications, they need to revamp the whole notification framework. SMS notices suck almost as bad.
I’d love to have a quick pulldown like Android does. But I can’t see Apple doing that. Also kind of surprised that the jailbreak community hasn’t figured out a way.
I’ll be surprised if this isn’t in OS 4.0. Especially now that Android is finally getting decent hardware and becoming big-time competition.
Like Philk said, it´s not the Push Notifications system that needs work, it´s the global notifications, all things included: push, sms, calendar, calls, etc
The way iPhone OS handles notifications is a complete joke right now, compared with Android and WebOS
Hope they adress the subject even before OS 4.0
Totally agree… they make using this part of the framework so difficult that it is not worth doing for many apps unless it is a key piece of the application (ie. Boxcar). In most cases when it’s a “nice-to-have” it’s typical not worth implementing.
So, just curious MG. As an iPhone “power user,” using push notification as much as you seem to do, just how often do you have to recharge your iPhone battery?! Mine slowly loses charge through a day but I avoid push notifications in part to avoid more usage. You on the other hand seem to have the phone in use constantly.
The worst thing about the current notification system is that once you unlock your phone (at least if you have a passcode, which you should) is that the notification is gone. What I’d like to see is persistent notifications and for multiple notifications an interface showing all recent (since you locked your phone) notifications with a tap to open the relevant app. Not a complete solution (needs a way to return to the notification screen quickly) but would be a vast improvement.
On the TV show Lie To Me, I saw Loker swipe his iPhone to go from one notification to the next. That’s a great way to go through notifications. Old ones don’t get overwritten, they just get stacked over.
The big problem with push is that it costs ongoing cash for a one time payment. The real reason so few apps offer push is the cost.
We evaluated offering push for our Twitter app (and still are considering it) but it’s difficult to make money with Apple’s available models.
Each .99 purchase means .70 cents profit to the developer, add in hosting costs for a server to support your users for all time going forward and it becomes problematic to make a profit over the long term.
This is a good point. I’m surprised more devs haven’t commented on this publicly.
The biggest complaint in an otherwise amazing app is that you can’t un-tag yourself from photos. In fact, the biggest complaint about Facebook is that people don’t have a way to approve photos they are tagged in before they get tagged publicly.
This is something that has been solved already in the jailbreak world. For those who are jailbroken, google “GriP” which is growl notifications for the iPhone. It is extremely useful and elegant way to solve the SMS/Push notifications problem.
Can’t you turn Push off globally by going to Settings and then turnIng the Notifications slider to off?
I told you guys with Facebook 3.0 came out that Facebook 3.1 would bring push notifications with it. It was also directly confirmed by the developer a month ago.
GriP is well worth jailbreaking your device for. It handles notifications similar to how Android does (with a dashboard type of interface.
Push notifications are nice but I’d rather see FB video on the iPhone. Its annoying right now that I can’t watch videos that my friends post.
Problem with GriP is that development has stopped lately. I also use it, its much better than iphone notification system, but it has still alot to improve
And forget jailbreak, this is something Apple has to do themselves if they want the iPhone to remain on top
The worst thing about the push and sms notifications is that you have to click through them all if you want to answer the phone. I can have 10 or so queued up and by the time i click okay the call has gone to voicemail. dumb.
Agreed with all the above. Having used Blackberry and Treo in the past the iPhone notifications are a joke at best, and dangerous at worst. It’s too easy to miss critical notifications.
The Facebook app is one of our best-rated apps and push notifications are only going to make it better. But you’re right on MG, a lot of people are going to be complaining about missed notifications.
Why is a facebook engineer posting breaking, company news on twitter? Isn’t that weird? Where is the PR dept? I give props to Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) for not tweeting since March. Shows Mark is ultra competitive which is a good thing for the company.
Very good article mate.
Something that you may be very interested in is the Facebook Status Generator, let me know what you think:
http://www.thei...atus-generator/
Looking forward to reading more of your stuff mate.