Don't take this the wrong way, but you need to accept that whatever AAPL gives you is all you need. You don't need push notifications, you don't need A2DP bluetooth stereo, you dont need turn by turn gps, but you do need to give AAPL $0.30 for every DRM track in your library to free it.
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Did we forget push notifications on the iPhone?
- Thread starter dude963841
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Don't take this the wrong way, but you need to accept that whatever AAPL gives you is all you need. You don't need push notifications, you don't need A2DP bluetooth stereo, you dont need turn by turn gps, but you do need to give AAPL $0.30 for every DRM track in your library to free it.
zachplaysguitar
macrumors 6502
Well, Apple did call them "push notifications". "Background notifications" seems to imply that the app will RUN in the background, when really it will not. Only the connection to Apple's servers will run in the background.
Masquerade
macrumors 6502a
Push
When you talk about push notification, are you referring to the email function push?
I get my emails, from my yahoo account, come through automatically within a minute of my actual yahoo account receiving them.
When you talk about push notification, are you referring to the email function push?
I get my emails, from my yahoo account, come through automatically within a minute of my actual yahoo account receiving them.
I suspect that far fewer people actually _need_ real time notification of various events than think they do.
question fear
macrumors 68020
No, we're talking about application notifications, like exiting an IM program but still getting notified of new IMs, etc.
Notifications go from the service's server to Apple Push Notification servers and then to the iPhone. They are highly unlikely to be the same servers that run iTunes.
The App Store updates are not run via push notification and I'm unsure as to why you'd make that up. The app simply auto-runs (I believe it's weekly) to check for updates if you don't run it yourself. It is not the same as the Push service. As a system app, it can run in the background.
Well, the alternative to real time notification of events is zero notification at all, since other apps can't do pull notification of events daily/hourly/15minutely. Manually starting a bunch of apps all the time just to see if something's changed would be a huge waste of time.
on the unofficial apple web log podcast this week they had a developer who claimed the reason we aren't getting push notification is because the staff working on it was the same staff that created the mobile me mess and they were all fired. so we will have to wait untill they put that group back together. i don't know how true that is because someone fixed mobile me - so they obviously have people on it. i bet their having scaling issues with it. applications like twitter are going to bog it down and they need to deal with that.
Saladinos
macrumors 68000
Even twitter can only just barely keep up with its own load...
Got this during the keynote.
Besides, I don't think those guys would be fired for the MobileMe mess. The servers cracked due to the load. It's very difficult to create a service like MobileMe that scales to so many people at once. That's why Google and Microsoft spend such insane amounts of money on servers and data centres. I'm not sure Apple realised just how much money successful web services need. Apple makes very popular products, so any web service they launch is going to have to scale very well indeed right from the start.
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Fuchal
macrumors 68030
TheSpaz
macrumors 604
I'm not looking forward to all of those slow downs and problems when push gets released. A day and a half later, I get an IM? No thanks. I want notifications, but I wish it didn't have to travel through so many multiple servers first.
What would be better is if we got to choose which app we want to run in the background. I found that MOST apps have no need to run in the background because most of them freeze the current state so they can resume when re-opened. Apps that would need to run in the background are instant messengers and to-do apps (mostly)... that should be up to the user. How about having a setting in the app's settings where you can specify if you want it to continue running in the background... you can even have a little icon in the status-bar that the app is still running to remind you that you have something draining your battery.
like you said there are probably only a small group of "types" of applications that nee to run in the background. apple should write the generic background app that the app of choice hooks into. it will be generic so anyone can hook into it - but it uses their servers - not apples. perhaps i'm oversimplifying it and something like this won't work - but if i were apple i'd stay far away from having to run the servers necessary for this - they just open themselves up to a whole bunch of hurt and angry customers when they go down. Once their servers go down - ever single application fails. like when blackberry goes down the entire planet of their devices stop working.
PoitNarf
macrumors 65816
You're right, my needs are quite finite and my iPhone is far from a necessity... but what does the DRM free stuff have anything to do with push notifications?
There is a huge demand for it (maybe from people who don't need it per sé) but it was promised by apple.
I know it's a bitch to implement though. I tried something myself on small scale in java and never got it to work decently.
basicly I had a background service running and application could register events and actions for them. The background service would then poll the server/data source at intervals that could be selected. (never tried an always on). But it never worked to well. If the frontend had load the backend would lagg and stall etc.
I'm sure if Apple had another MobileMe fiasco right after the current one it wouldn't be a good thing at all.
I know it's a bitch to implement though. I tried something myself on small scale in java and never got it to work decently.
basicly I had a background service running and application could register events and actions for them. The background service would then poll the server/data source at intervals that could be selected. (never tried an always on). But it never worked to well. If the frontend had load the backend would lagg and stall etc.
I'm sure if Apple had another MobileMe fiasco right after the current one it wouldn't be a good thing at all.
PoitNarf
macrumors 65816
I agree, they should either release a implementation that works well or don't do the push notifications at all.
That's not entirely true. You can accept that you don't need A2DP or you can shell out a few more bucks and buy an external unit that plugs into the headphone jack. I bought a Sony DR-BT21 for just that purpose and it works great. You can accept that you don't need push or you can buy things like Beejive from people who took some initiative and did their own version of push. And it too works great. You can accept that you need to give AAPL (good way of putting that, btw) $0.30 for each DRM track or you can buy the CDs and rip 'em yourself, automatically giving you a backup and thumbing your nose at AAPL. There's ways around everything, it's just a matter of how much you need, or think you need, any particular item. AAPL only holds all the cards if you want them to.
Masquerade
macrumors 6502a
I agree. It would be better if Apple let us choose which applications we need to run in background (2 non-apple apps would be great in comparasion with nothing) and provide some methods to developers to avoid battery drain.
PoitNarf
macrumors 65816
Or perhaps Apple just writes a background application for checking notifications and all other applications use this. Developers would handle putting together their own notification servers instead of everything being pushed through Apple's servers.
Masquerade
macrumors 6502a
redman042
macrumors 68040
I agree they should dump the server notifications strategy altogether and just enable limited support for certain apps running in the background. Jailbreakers can already do this, and from what I've heard, it actually works quite good. Makes me want to jailbreak, but I have little free time in my life to muck around if I screw something up. I want full warranty coverage and I want updates as soon as they are released. So I stay legit.
Apple could allow background apps but set very strict criteria for what kinds of apps are allowed to have this feature, and how much the apps can do while they are running in the background.
Apple could allow background apps but set very strict criteria for what kinds of apps are allowed to have this feature, and how much the apps can do while they are running in the background.
My experience is that it's very hit-or-miss as to what actually works as a background process and for how long. Even if you jailbreak the phone, install Backgrounder and force an app to stay running (and it does actually run like that), the system will still blow it away if it needs memory for something else rather than telling you're low on memory and can't do what you just tried to do. If you're going to have to micromanage apps, memory and so on, you might as well cut the crap and get a phone with a real multitasking system like WinMo or Blackberry. I can appreciate Apple's concern with the phone getting slow, running out of memory and not wanting to force the user to have to care about that, but their "solution" is just as bad as the problem. Worse, actually, since they promised a half-assed solution last fall and haven't yet come through with that.
Just FYI, jailbreaking can't really hurt anything and if you restore it, you magically get your warranty back. I, personally, haven't read of anyone who actually killed their 3G by attempting to jailbreak it and if you can read, it's easy to do. But it's not a solution. The percentage of people who jailbreak is extremely low because there isn't much of a reason to do so and I don't think anyone is making a living selling apps that require you to jailbreak the phone to be of practical use.