Push Email Support for .Mac Accounts on iPhone 2.0

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)


http://images.macrumors.com/article/2008/05/08/033747-photo2.jpg


TUAW reports (http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/07/mac-push-e-mail-coming-to-iphone-2-0/) that the latest iPhone 2.0 beta that was just released added the ability to provide "Push" email services from your .Mac account.

"Push" email allows the server to push email down to your phone when it arrives. The alternative method involves the iPhone itself polling the server at regular intervals, resulting in a significant battery drain over time.


Article Link (http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2008/05/08/push-email-support-for-mac-accounts-on-iphone-2-0/)

[NP3]

Interesting! I knew the basics of Push...but somehow missed the battery benefits of it.

[illitrate23]

Interesting! I knew the basics of Push...but somehow missed the battery benefits of it.

i'd have thought the battery benefits are dependant upon the amount of email you recieve, no?
if you recieve 10 emails every 30 minutes, then surely it's more cost effective to just poll every 30 minutes and get those ten in a batch, no?

whereas if you recieve 10 emails throughout the whole day, then push is better i guess.
how does it work? are emails sent over the phone network then? or is a signal sent to the phone to tell it to connect to the email server?

[macduke]

wow, a reason to actually buy a .mac account. throw in at least 60gb of storage for the iDisk and i might go for it. for now i will use gmail and use my wd passport drive.

push would be useful. i rarely get more than 10 emails a day. i keep my gmail account a secret so that it doesn't get whored out to a million businesses with spam. that's what my yahoo account is for.

it would be nice to get emails pushed over. my iPhone likes to fetch my emails on some days, but most of the time it doesn't auto download and i have to manually check. this has caused me to show up to several cancelled classes. suck.

so my school email, when i go to log in on the web, says "provided by microsoft exchange server 2003." isn't the iphone software 2.0 supposed to support push with exchange?

[BVGuitarPlayer]

If the cost of .Mac is a concern. Walk into an Apple Store, look for any of the 5-20 people buying a Mac at the same time, give them 70 bucks, (remember, buy a Mac save 30% on .Mac.). Go upgrade your storage to 60 gb with the money you saved and a bit more and begin the painfully slow backup of your entire music library or iBook HD (I'm guessing). All you need is 10, you should just back up documents, host websites with a few pictures, use it as a flash drive and you're all set.

[sir42]

This is great. I'd love to see gmail/google apps push email support as well, since I have both .mac and a google apps email accounts.

[toomuchmac]

This was the no brainer that I have been waiting to read.

Just getting my iCal info sync'd up on my iPhone is one of the only reasons I really need to even plug in. .Mac does it great "over the air" with my few computers so it only makes sense to extend that to the iPhone.

[violaboy]

I wish it could push calendar items too. I update my calendar on my MBP but sync my phone with my mini. It would be great to get calendar changes as they happen!
:)

[whenpaulsparks]

if apple's push implementation is anything like Microsoft DirectPush or whatever they call it on Windows Mobile, then what the OP said is absolutely the opposite of reality.

DirectPush drains a battery faster because it basically has to maintain a connection to the tower all the time. We've seen battery life *increase* by disabling directpush and turning on regular checking at 10 minute intervals here at my company.

However, if apple does something where getting a push message is equivalent to getting a phone call or text message (as opposed to Microsoft's implementation of keeping a constant connection), then yes, battery life could be increased. I fail to see how it would be able to do this over Wi-fi, though, because with Wi-Fi you would have to maintain a connection all the time for push to work (a "pushed" request is not going to be able to go through a NAT'ed firewall without there being an existing connection, and hence draining your battery).

I think we need to see some real-world results before making assumptions like this.

Edit: My post sounds really negative. Actually i'm excited for push email, with or without battery changes for the positive or negative. Especially Exchange support...

[bytethese]

Holy egg salad Batman!!

Damn, I need to tell people to switch to emailing me at my .Mac account if this is going to be in 2.0! I thought IMAP was cool, I'll take Push email plz, k thx! :)

[kimble3]

This could be very interesting news indeed. Is it possible that Apple is going to make a move against Exchange? They've already added a Calendar server to OS X Server. Is corporate email next? Perhaps they are going to position OS X Server as a much cheaper alternative corporate email/calendar server...

[bstpierre]

I have a Yahoo account that I push to my iPhone. It doesn't get a lot of traffic so I am not getting a lot of pushes. I don't have a connection most of the work day so it must not be trying to keep a constant connection with the server. If I do have a message waiting to be pushed and I wander into coverage while at work it comes down and my phone does it alert to notify me. I would love to get my gmail account to push but I wouldn't want to give up the IMAP. I love having my various email clients all pointing to the same email database.

I suspect that the reason push is a battery save over (or no worse than) fetch is that every time you poll the server with fetch and don't download a message, you have wasted some battery. If there is a message to fetch or one is getting pushed, it is probably pretty close to the same battery usuage to do either process. Just my guess though.

[jlanuez]

This was the no brainer that I have been waiting to read.

Just getting my iCal info sync'd up on my iPhone is one of the only reasons I really need to even plug in. .Mac does it great "over the air" with my few computers so it only makes sense to extend that to the iPhone.

Agreed, if it "pushes" iCal - this is a huge feature upgrade!
Will have to sync even less, just for the rare iTunes sync!

[tothelimit]

i was wondering if/when we were gonna see this. it seems weird when apple lets their own child fall behind.

[JPS]

Is there (or where will be) any way for a POP account to get pushed, as well?

[GorillaPaws]

It's about time! I never understood why Apple didn't make the changes necessary for this to have been included since launch--I mean it's kind of sad when they have to tell you to go to yahoo to get your e-mail because they aren't willing to do whatever it takes for your paid account.

[bigandy]

Is there (or where will be) any way for a POP account to get pushed, as well?

No. Unless you forward that to a push capable service, no.

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

This will be really nice. I hope it does have improvements in battery life.

[EagerDragon]

I wish it could push calendar items too. I update my calendar on my MBP but sync my phone with my mini. It would be great to get calendar changes as they happen!
:)

If you have .Mac you can edit the MBP, sync, .Mac updates Mini with the changes, iPhone gets the changes when you sync with the mini.

[wildcardd]

It unfortunately doesn't support contacts and iCal...yet. I think that would be a plus to be able to push sync those items. I think I might spend the money for a .mac account just for that.


Walk into an Apple Store, look for any of the 5-20 people buying a Mac at the same time, give them 70 bucks, (remember, buy a Mac save 30% on .Mac.).

Or you could go to Amazon.com and buy it for $70. That way, you don't look like the cheap bastard standing outside an Apple store trying to save $30. ;)

[mdwsta4]

what's the big deal if you have IMAP or POP set up to check every 5 minutes?
*edit* just realized the iphone only allows you 15, 30, or every hour. if it was every 5 minutes i think that'd be fine.

[PlaceofDis]

what's the big deal if you have IMAP or POP set up to check every 5 minutes?
*edit* just realized the iphone only allows you 15, 30, or every hour. if it was every 5 minutes i think that'd be fine.

if it was every five minutes it'd give you horrid battery life. push helps conserve the battery life since it doesn't have to check the server.

glad i have a .mac account, might actually be useful now.

[FreeState]

If you have .Mac you can edit the MBP, sync, .Mac updates Mini with the changes, iPhone gets the changes when you sync with the mini.

Yes that works but the ideal way for most of us would be for the iPhone to sync with the .mac account (contacts/calendars etc) without having to plug it into the computer.

[stockscalper]

Worthless since it only works with a .mac account, but typical of Apple to keep us on the money leash.

[jasonfj]

I've never understood why contacts and calendar aren't synced over the air. Even my rusty old Sidekick syncs OTA.

[megfilmworks]

Worthless since it only works with a .mac account, but typical of Apple to keep us on the money leash.

What makes you think this will only work with .mac?
Have you missed the other announcements?

[theotherguy]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

HURRAY

[theotherguy]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

thank god

[TravisReynolds]

I'm so glad this tells me what "push" means. At first I'm just like, what the heck. This is sweet!

[nagromme]

I fail to see how it would be able to do this over Wi-fi, though, because with Wi-Fi you would have to maintain a connection all the time for push to work (a "pushed" request is not going to be able to go through a NAT'ed firewall without there being an existing connection, and hence draining your battery).

I know nothing about any of this, but thinking out loud--if what you say is true, then maybe the push signal NEVER comes over WiFi, but always arrives like an SMS message, regardless of whether you're also online with WiFi or not. But then, once the iPhone knows there's mail to be retrieved, it would use whatever connection is can get--WiFi preferred--to do the actual data transfer. So the Internet would not be directly used for the notification/checking, only when actual mail arrives.

[Transeau]

Worthless since it only works with a .mac account, but typical of Apple to keep us on the money leash.

Uh, you forget about Exchange support?

[danredwing]

What I'd really love to see is push gmail and google calendar. I subscribe with iCal to my google calendar but I have to plug in to sync events and contacts. I like entering events in the phone's calendar so I can set up alarms, but I also really like having a web based calendar that I can pull up easily at work on our pc based closed network. If i could add events to google cal and have them immediately sync over the air including the alarms, that would be really cool.

when I watched the demo video I was hoping for the same sort of implementation thru google and/or .mac as I have both.

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Worthless since it only works with a .mac account, but typical of Apple to keep us on the money leash.

obviously you have no idea what's going on.
The email service must also allow for push email. Apple is just adding a feature to .Mac, they are in no way crippling other email services.

Also they are supporting Microsoft exchange which has this very feature.

[pseudonymph]

Apple really should have supported IMAP IDLE (http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html) from the get-go in iphone Mail just like they do in Mail.app on OS X. Would solve a lot of the push complaints from non-exchange/yahoo providers, like oh .mac and most other imap providers.

And even with this I wouldn't sign up for .mac. I'm not paying $100 for something that can easily be duplicated with a pro flickr account, a gmail address, and a wordpress.com blog. Even paying for flickr the whole thing is only $25/year.

[bytethese]

I fail to see how it would be able to do this over Wi-fi, though, because with Wi-Fi you would have to maintain a connection all the time for push to work (a "pushed" request is not going to be able to go through a NAT'ed firewall without there being an existing connection, and hence draining your battery).

Have you seen a current Blackberry? My Blackberry 8320 (Curve) uses Edge when I am at the office, since I don't get T-Mobile where I live, I connect it to my Wifi at home and I am able to make phone calls and get my pushed email. :)

I think we need to see some real-world results before making assumptions like this.

RIM does this, that's pretty real world. :)

[jsgreen]

Apple really should have supported IMAP IDLE (http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html) from the get-go in iphone Mail just like they do in Mail.app on OS X. Would solve a lot of the push complaints from non-exchange/yahoo providers, like oh .mac and most other imap providers.

And even with this I wouldn't sign up for .mac. I'm not paying $100 for something that can easily be duplicated with a pro flickr account, a gmail address, and a wordpress.com blog. Even paying for flickr the whole thing is only $25/year.

I totally agree - as a FastMail user I have had IDLE push email for years on my Treo (using IDLE and an email client called Chatter).

Come on Apple - support IDLE for real PUSH IMAP email!!

[stagi]

9to5mac.com says that they will have push calendar synching. That would be a nice addition to .mac and would be a good incentive for me to renew.

[shk718]

I wish it could push calendar items too. I update my calendar on my MBP but sync my phone with my mini. It would be great to get calendar changes as they happen!
:)

i've been using plaxo to sync my calendar and contacts between my computers - it's free and works very well.

[Rojo]

While having "push" anything doesn't really mean that much to me (I don't need "instant" e-mail -- I'd rather retrieve it when I'm ready for it), it's nice to see Apple FINALLY giving some kind of perk for .Mac subscribers.

They could do a LOT more, though. .Mac still costs way too much for what little you get. I still have it, and I like having a .mac e-mail address -- but I feel stupid every time I have to renew for another $99, and wonder what am I really paying for?

Keep the .Mac benefits coming, Apple!

[matticus008]

if it was every five minutes it'd give you horrid battery life. push helps conserve the battery life since it doesn't have to check the server.
Using push email does not conserve battery life unless you get fewer emails than polling intervals each day--and the kinds of hyper-obsessive people who feel they "need" push email get a constant stream, so it will not be the case. Periodic polling is the least battery-intensive method because it does not require an active connection; the only time it is wasteful is if the poll comes back empty (i.e. no new mail).

Somebody messed up the original post. Push does not save battery life; rather the opposite, especially if you get messages every few minutes throughout the day, thus preventing your connection (either EDGE or wifi) from ever sitting idle.

RIM does this, that's pretty real world. :)
I think he was referring to the supposed battery savings, since the only way the article statement could be true is if Apple has invented some new technology.

[GuillaumeB]

When you buy a BlackBerry, you can create a Blackberry Mail account which basically lets you set up you current email address and receive your messages as push to your cellphone. My gf set up her Gmail account this way.

Now could Apple come up with something similar for non .Mac subscribers? They could even use this database to create Apple ID for the iTMS

[twoodcc]

i really hope that this means new features for .mac at wwdc

[sneaky squirrel]

Im really confused about this push mail thing..

at the moment as im just starting out with the iphone (and as Ive found out ive used $90 of data usage already)! i'm limiting my internet usage to keep my bill down.. will this push email service mean it will cost more in terms of downloads? does it mean its always busy doing something in the background all the time?

can i disconnect/connect from push mail whenever i want?

and i know this is a dumb qn, but if i sign up for .mac can i access my .mac account over the internet? sorry im a newbie!

[zed2]

Im really confused about this push mail thing..

at the moment as im just starting out with the iphone (and as Ive found out ive used $90 of data usage already)! i'm limiting my internet usage to keep my bill down.. will this push email service mean it will cost more in terms of downloads? does it mean its always busy doing something in the background all the time?

can i disconnect/connect from push mail whenever i want?

and i know this is a dumb qn, but if i sign up for .mac can i access my .mac account over the internet? sorry im a newbie!


OK so you've a jailbroken phone then :)...

Well push requires that the phone keeps an open connection back to the server, in this case Apple. Now you are billing for bytes send and not time connected (I hope)... in which case push should be low on your billing as you will be sending/receiving very low amounts of data. Unless you get lots of mail :P

I don't think you can turn off the push mail on iphone 2 short of disabling the e-mail account in the preferences of the phone.

Yes mobileMe and in fact .mac allow you to access your e-mail via a web browser, so you can read/file/reply your mail from any internet connected system using almost any web browswer.

--Zed

[bytethese]

Im really confused about this push mail thing..

at the moment as im just starting out with the iphone (and as Ive found out ive used $90 of data usage already)! i'm limiting my internet usage to keep my bill down.. will this push email service mean it will cost more in terms of downloads? does it mean its always busy doing something in the background all the time?

can i disconnect/connect from push mail whenever i want?

and i know this is a dumb qn, but if i sign up for .mac can i access my .mac account over the internet? sorry im a newbie!

I'm really confused about this $90 for data thing. In the US, iPhone's all should have an unlimited data plan with AT&T for $20. How are you getting charged extra?

As for .Mac, yes, you can check using a browser if you like along with checking on the iPhone. :)

[dalvin200]

isn't this all par & arcel of the new mobileme service anyway?
ie, PUSH email, PUSH calendar, PUSH contacts...

[steve bate]

isn't this all par & arcel of the new mobileme service anyway?
ie, PUSH email, PUSH calendar, PUSH contacts...

But the OP and most of the replies posted before the announcement at WWDC re MobileMe

Steve

[sneaky squirrel]

Thanks for your help zed2, thats good to know..
and thanks bytethese, the $90 bill is cos im in australia and using an unlocked phone! hasnt been released here yet..