Is iPhone 3.0 Push Instant?

[Clete2]

I read here:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...ceo-on-iphone-chat-app-push-notifications.ars

That iPhone push is only "manual, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes" -- just like fetch. Is this true? Or is it instant?

From what Ars knows of the initial iPhone OS 3.0 beta, the only customization Apple has given to Push Notifications so far is e-mail-like polling frequencies of push (obviously), manual, or 15, 30, and 60 minutes. Apple still has plenty of time to polish this aspect of Push Notifications, though, and Sternberg said that he would relay our feedback on this potentially battery gobbling and late-night-awakening feature to the app's developers.

 

[scootaru]

I read here:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...ceo-on-iphone-chat-app-push-notifications.ars

That iPhone push is only "manual, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes" -- just like fetch. Is this true? Or is it instant?

you forgot to include the default setting for push notifications...Push. The options you quoted are alternatives in case you don't want to get notified so often. I don't have the 3.0 beta. I'm just going off of how I interpretted the statement.

 

[admanimal]

There is an option to turn Push on and off. There is also a separate set of options for Fetch, which are every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, Hourly, or Manually.

 

[thelordnyax]

with the AP News app beta with push, they push was instant

Push is isntant (that's what push is...Push!), not fetch

 

[Phatzer]

You may find a slight delay, but nothing that's really worth worrying about.

 

[retroneo]

I don't think it's instant enough to do a VoIP app yet.

 

[jimf123]

You may find a slight delay, but nothing that's really worth worrying about.

So do we know if it is quick enough to use a messenger app (when one of them supports Push) to replace SMS's between two iPhone users? Would the alerts appear as quickly as the text message would have done?

 

[mikey2004]

I have my hotmail account set up on my iphone 3.0 and get an email on the phone before I would be notified on msn messenger on the computer.

 

[Masquerade]

with the AP News app beta with push, they push was instant

Push is isntant (that's what push is...Push!), not fetch

how you know that? the ap message got some timestamp from the source? (you know what is the delay from the source)

More, over, a push is a fetch, theres no magic on it - the client only mantain a talk with the server to
decide a minimun sleep frequency over and over again.

 

[jjprusk]

how you know that? the ap message got some timestamp from the source? (you know what is the delay from the source)

More, over, a push is a fetch, theres no magic on it - the client only mantain a talk with the server to
decide a minimun sleep frequency over and over again.

Actually this isn't true. There are two cases of "push" - part of the M$ Exchange protocol know as DirectPush and IMAP IDLE. In the case of DirectPush when a message arrives in your server inbox, a packet (I believe its UDP,but don't remember the specifics) is sent to your phone from the server which causes the phone to perform a "sync"). Note that many server now support DirectPush (Kerio, Scalix, Communigate, Zimbra,...) so you can run a good mail server on Linux and not have to run the Windoze junk.

In the case of IMAP IDLE, there is a persistent TCP connection between the server and the phone and the equivalent of a "wakeup" is sent from the server to the phone which again causes a scan of the mailbox. In this case there is a TCP keep alive message periodically sent between phone and server, but it is to keep the TCP connection alive.

Note in both cases, there is no polling, the server notifies the phone of an arrival, and the phone goes about its business of syncing the mailbox(es). I have tested this with many servers, several clients, and both methods (DirectPush and IMAP IDLE) and all work very well and almost instantaneously.

The advantage of IMAP IDLE is that its an open standard, many accounts can be active simultaneously, and virtually any client and server can utilize this technology. The disadvantage is that it is limited to IMAP mailboxes only and does not provide a way to sync calendar and address book. The good news is that calendar can now be synced with caldav, which is becoming quite good.

The advantage of DirectPush is that it supports mail, calendar,... so its quite good at causing everything to keep in-sync. There are two major disadvantages of this method: 1)most phones can only support one account (which is very limiting) and 2)it requires a proprietary protocol owned by M$.

In the long run, the standards-based protocols (IMAP, CalDav, etc.) will be used by everyone and the industry will phase out the proprietary stuff - its only a matter of time...

 

[Clete2]

Phew, good. I always thought push was true push, but that article confused me. Thanks 😀.

Does 3.0 support IMAP IDLE?

 

[jjprusk]

Is iPhone 3.0 Push Instant

Phew, good. I always thought push was true push, but that article confused me. Thanks 😀.

Does 3.0 support IMAP IDLE?

I have not installed 3.0 so I can't really answer that - maybe someone who has the latest beta version could shed some light here. Almost all mail clients on computer systems support IMAP IDLE and it really works well. It would certainly be nice if 3.0 supported this as well. Supposedly 3.0 supports CalDAV, which is a very big deal in that you will be able to keep multiple clients synchronized to a single calendar in a manner analogous to IMAP IDLE. I've been using this for a while on several systems and it works very well.

 

[pintnight]

Phew, good. I always thought push was true push, but that article confused me. Thanks 😀.

Does 3.0 support IMAP IDLE?

I have not installed 3.0 so I can't really answer that - maybe someone who has the latest beta version could shed some light here. Almost all mail clients on computer systems support IMAP IDLE and it really works well. It would certainly be nice if 3.0 supported this as well. Supposedly 3.0 supports CalDAV, which is a very big deal in that you will be able to keep multiple clients synchronized to a single calendar in a manner analogous to IMAP IDLE. I've been using this for a while on several systems and it works very well.

No, apple won't do it because IDLE requires a connection 100% to the server. I should also clear up that IDLE is not PUSH! The IMAP server does not push any messages to the client, all IDLE does is notify a client that the mailbox (Inbox folder as an example) that the folder has been changed with the list of changes, as in "number of recent messages", "number of flags changed on a message", etc. The client then look at what was changed and update the folder, if the client see that there are new messages, the client will then download the message from the server.

I know how exactly how IDLE work because I added that support to a email application that worked on (I'm a software developer).

 

[Clete2]

BTW: Just installed 3.0 beta (never had it previously -- at all. was on 2.2.1) ------ CalDav is AWESOME!

 

[jjprusk]

No, apple won't do it because IDLE requires a connection 100% to the server. I should also clear up that IDLE is not PUSH! The IMAP server does not push any messages to the client, all IDLE does is notify a client that the mailbox (Inbox folder as an example) that the folder has been changed with the list of changes, as in "number of recent messages", "number of flags changed on a message", etc. The client then look at what was changed and update the folder, if the client see that there are new messages, the client will then download the message from the server.

I know how exactly how IDLE work because I added that support to a email application that worked on (I'm a software developer).

You're confusing marketing phraseology and protocol terminology. Generally, most people understand "push" as a means to receive email on their mail client in close to real-time and not have to wait for a long (many minutes) to receive mail and calendar updates. If you had paid attention, even my original message has the "push" in quotes, which should've clued you in. Secondly, I don't think I'd make the statement that Apple simply won't implement IMAP IDLE. There have been several mobile clients using IMAP IDLE going back several years that work very well and don't use lots of resources. I used to have a Treo 650 with SnapperMail, which implemented IMAP IDLE and it provided nearly instantaneous sync. of email while using very little battery. Its just a question of how much effort they put into making the implementation efficient.

 

[pintnight]

You're confusing marketing phraseology and protocol terminology. Generally, most people understand "push" as a means to receive email on their mail client in close to real-time and not have to wait for a long (many minutes) to receive mail and calendar updates. If you had paid attention, even my original message has the "push" in quotes, which should've clued you in. Secondly, I don't think I'd make the statement that Apple simply won't implement IMAP IDLE. There have been several mobile clients using IMAP IDLE going back several years that work very well and don't use lots of resources. I used to have a Treo 650 with SnapperMail, which implemented IMAP IDLE and it provided nearly instantaneous sync. of email while using very little battery. Its just a question of how much effort they put into making the implementation efficient.

Uh, you are mistaken because you don't understand how IMAP IDLE work. It is _not_ and will never be PUSH. IMAP IDLE was not designed to be PUSH (it just gives the impression of doing push). There will have to be a new IMAP protocol to handle Apple's way of doing PUSH with e-mail clients for IMAP.

IMAP IDLE does requires a connection to the server 100%, mean the mail application has to be always connected to the server in the background and that is against Apple's rule.

The other phones you mention is that they have connection to the server in the background to do IMAP IDLE which is fine because nobody put a limitation on how those mail application should run in the background.

 

[jstigall]

Uh, you are mistaken because you don't understand how IMAP IDLE work. It is _not_ and will never be PUSH. IMAP IDLE was not designed to be PUSH (it just gives the impression of doing push). There will have to be a new IMAP protocol to handle Apple's way of doing PUSH with e-mail clients for IMAP.

IMAP IDLE does requires a connection to the server 100%, mean the mail application has to be always connected to the server in the background and that is against Apple's rule.

The other phones you mention is that they have connection to the server in the background to do IMAP IDLE which is fine because nobody put a limitation on how those mail application should run in the background.

You're mistaken. Mail is always running in the background, and so is the iPod app when you're using it. If you jailbreak your phone you can see these in the process list.

How do you think apple push works? It is connected to the server 100% of the time, otherwise how would the phone know it had a message? They don't peer with the phone carriers like RIM does.

 

[jambobowron]

what!?!

what are you on about... of course push (hence the name) is instant the 15, 30, hourly or manual options are for fetching data for apps or mail that doesnt yet support push... eg GoogleMail

 

[Mr. Giver '94]

Push is instant or darn near close. If you have MobileMe, test it by sending yourself a "find my iPhone" message.

 

[aforty]

For me with Textfree Lite there's about a 1.5 second delay between someone SMSing me and me getting the push alert. I'd say that's pretty darn near instant.

 

[skwoytek]

I don't think it's instant enough to do a VoIP app yet.

Unless there's a communication error, yes it is.

So do we know if it is quick enough to use a messenger app (when one of them supports Push) to replace SMS's between two iPhone users? Would the alerts appear as quickly as the text message would have done?

Yes, as a developer I beta tested AIM beta with push notifications. When I would send an IM reply from iChat on my computer, which then went to AIM servers, which sent a push notification to the Apple Push Notification server, which then sent a push notification to my phone, which then appeared on my phone - they time was rarely more than two seconds and never more than five. That's over 3G, not WiFi.