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Can iOS 9 seriously just support push Gmail already?
- Thread starter benguild
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Google deactivated push, not Apple.
Log in to the official Gmail app and turn on its push notifications. (But turn off its badges.) Then turn off the notifications for your gmail account in Apple's Mail.
Then throw the Gmail app into a dark, distant folder with the other apps you don't use.
Now the Gmail app notifies you when there's mail and you can open the Apple Mail app whenever you like.
Then throw the Gmail app into a dark, distant folder with the other apps you don't use.
Now the Gmail app notifies you when there's mail and you can open the Apple Mail app whenever you like.
Except it opens the Gmail app every time you interact with the notification. Might as well just stick with the Gmail app in that case.
If the OP doesn't mind a 3rd party server getting involved, both Boxer and Spark are excellent clients IMO which provide push.
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People still blaming Apple for something Google did?
So why does Android have it but iOS doesn't? It still works fine on my Galaxy Note. Admittedly it is IMAP idle and not true push but it works.
Because Google has left support for it in its own OS (Android), but disabled it for others.
Your argument makes no sense. If the server (not OS) supports it then iOS can do it. Doesn't it work with IMAP idle? Apple was the one that removed that option long ago.
You're being a bit dense. It's well documented that Google turned it off on iOS.
Yes I know they dropped Exchange support but they still support IMAP idle which acts similarly to push email from the user perspective. Unfortunately Apple dropped support for IMAP idle a while back.
This is the one flaw, but I just avoid swiping the notifications. You eventually get used to it.
I admit that this aspect is one big step back but I think it's worth the 3 big steps forward. It's better than nothing.
Seems like what you think was/is happening is what's not really making sense. Apple didn't do anything, Google dropped support for Exchange for free Gmail accounts. I'm not sure what Android is using and what Google basically can do with their own OS and their own mail service, both that they themselves control, but with iOS I don't recall there ever being IMAP IDLE support, so with the Exchange support being removed by Google there wasn't anything that Apple did to no longer be able to support push for free Gmail accounts.
I don’t think iOS ever supported IMAP IDLE. Gmail used Exchange support, which they discontinued, Outlook.com is set up as an Exchange account as well (when you configure it manually as an IMAP account, you won’t receive push either), whereas Yahoo and MobileMe/iCloud use something similar to Push-IMAP, although the implementations seem to vary and have required some more coordination at Apple. For instance, some people discovered that Apple was using XMPP for its own push email.
I think the current state of push email in iOS Mail is that you either support Exchange ActiveSync or you work with Apple on a proprietary solution. Apple made a big deal of their partnership with Yahoo at the time when iOS 2 was released (hence the special access). Google does neither and they don’t seem to care about it at all. Still, it’s a legitimate question why correctly configured email servers that support IMAP IDLE or Push-IMAP still don’t work in iOS Mail. They clearly felt the pressure to support Exchange (they devoted an entire section of a keynote to enterprise support), but continue to pick and choose their partnerships with email providers and of course have an incentive to push iCloud upon users. I do share the sentiment that it’s daft that Apple doesn’t allow it.
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Yes you are correct I think that Apple never supported IMAP idle in iOS but they did on the desktop and could add it to iOS as well if they wanted to That is how Android mail apps work (and not just gmail).
From what I understand, IMAP IDLE on a smaller battery powered device has some drawbacks. Again, I don't know the details of the ins and outs when it comes to Android and mail push there, but just throwing in IDLE support on its own basically isn't as simple as just doing in and that's it.
Yes you are probably right but my Android devices seem to last at least as long on battery as the iPhones that I have had.
IMAP IDLE is rather unsophisticated. It requires one persistent connection per mailbox and doesn’t allow the client to distinguish between the signals that the server sends. If you have lots of folders and are doing a lot on your email account, such as deleting and moving emails around, IMAP IDLE is overkill because it will attempt to reflect every action you take on your phone as well, even when you are not using your phone. The command was never meant to minimise battery impact, but make your email account more efficient without having to force your mail client to check sporadically whether you’ve made any changes on another device. In other words, good for desktop computers, not so good for mobile devices.
Exchange ActiveSync was specifically designed for this and requires only one connection per account, not per folder. It also synchronises the changes more efficiently. That’s probably why Apple doesn’t use IMAP IDLE even for iCloud, but a different implementation altogether. There are better ways to do this, like P-IMAP and IMAP NOTIFY, but I don’t think they are widely supported yet anyway.
With respect to other devices, I remember that my BlackBerry 10 device was not great with IMAP IDLE either. By default, it only used IMAP IDLE on my inbox and sent mailbox, all the others were disabled and merely refreshed by regular fetching. It was a very weird experience, because any changes outside these folders were never pushed back to the desktop or web client, but only submitted by fetch. When I would move an email to another folder, the email virtually disappears from the inbox on my other device and only reappears after the phone has updated the receiving folder again. It’s really not a good experience and when you select push for all other folders, you will notice it in your battery life. It’s just a waste of energy.
With Exchange ActiveSync you often run into the problem that providers cap the sync limit to one or a few months and they don’t sync anything else. My own mail provider offers ActiveSync, but I can only ever sync all emails I received within the last 30 days. So even if you get push support, ActiveSync has other drawbacks. I have become accustomed to not having push email support and use a 1 hour fetch now. For that I get access to all my emails.
The Gmail app can offer things that the Mail app cannot. Google can use Apple’s APIs for push notifications whenever the user needs to be notified (which doesn’t require much energy, since its collated and goes via Apple’s push servers) and use background app refresh and push triggers to sporadically look for changes when it actually matters. It’s probably a much better experience to begin with.
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Except, Android doesn't use IMAP IDLE either. Much like Apple uses their own thing for iCloud, Google has their own thing for Gmail on Android.