iPhone 3.0: Push Notifications

[Vincent Ferrari]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1237463850.usr18053.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Let's face it; this is the one thing most of us were waiting for the longest and with breath most baited.&nbsp; Since Apple seems dead-set against background applications, this is as good as it's going to get if you don't want to jailbreak your phone.&nbsp; I've always hated the idea of bouncing a notification off a third party server, but there are certain advantages to the app not running.&nbsp; While I think they exaggerated the battery life hit of a background application, this definitely does save battery life.</p><p>It'll be nice to have an IM application that can "stay running" when closed, too.&nbsp; Currently, BeeJive does a good job of this by pusing MobileMe e-mails to your phone when a notification comes in and you're offline, but that's less than ideal.&nbsp; In the implementations shown by ESPN and Meebo, you can really see that this does have a lot of potential despite its potential shortcomings.</p><p>I'm taking a wait and see on this one with the hope that it's as good as it can be rather than as big a disaster as the devil on my shoulder is telling me it will be.&nbsp; I just hope it was worth the extended wait.</p><p>That's it for our iPhone 3.0 announcement coverage.&nbsp; There was a lot of other small stuff announced that we didn't cover, but I think we covered the most important features.&nbsp; Jeff and I will have our thoughts on 3.0 and what it means for users tomorrow.&nbsp; Thanks for reading!</p>

[doogald]

with breath most baited.

Real fast, FYI, the proper expressions is "bated breath". "Bated" is short for "abated".

As for push notification, it's better than not having it, but I wonder if it would be possible to allow the user to decide about background processing? In other words, rather than deciding for us that it is bad for your battery, let the user decide if she prefers it that way, and will risk shortened battery life.

[Darius Wey]

As for push notification, it's better than not having it, but I wonder if it would be possible to allow the user to decide about background processing? In other words, rather than deciding for us that it is bad for your battery, let the user decide if she prefers it that way, and will risk shortened battery life.

If given the choice between the two, the average user may not know the pros and cons of each, so there's a strong possibility that a handful of users would make the uninformed choice of enabling background processing at the risk of shortened battery life, and possible slowdowns and lock-ups. That could rebound and hit Apple in the form of negative comments, and even lawsuits (possible in this day and age). I'm not sure Apple wants that.

[Dyvim]

Seeing as how this was announced 1 year ago and never delivered, it's hard to get up much enthusiasm for this. (esp. considering the complicated programming model this requires of developers and the fact that it rules out background audio streaming) I get that the existing iPhone models don't really have the horsepower or RAM to do multi-tasking while maintaining good user experience, and I also get that it affects battery life, but at the absolute minimum, I would really, really, really like to be able to quickly jump into settings to change something without having to close and reopen the current app. Would be even better if I could jump into Mail and Safari. I could live with only having 1 3rd party app open at a time if they could just leave it open while I use some of the built-in apps. I really hope they can implement optional backgrounding for the next gen iPhone hardware- otherwise they're really ceding ground to the Palm Pre on this one (I know, WM and others have done multi-tasking since inception but in user experience they're back in the stone age, so right now the only real competitor I consider is the Pre).

[Vincent Ferrari]

The one thing I don't like about it is that it does nothing to allow background apps (like music players, as mentioned by Dyvim) to run in the background. Pandora and Last.fm as well as SiriusXM's new offering are much less useful if you have to have them open to listen to them. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but it is a really big bummer. :(