Push Notification Speculations

[jman800]

I realize there is already a thread about this, but I could not find it recently. So I decided to make this thread as more of a question..

Recently, Apple sent Dev's (Or maybe just a few) Apologies for the long approval and apparently, isn't ready for push just quite yet. This isn't great to hear, but at least when the big players come out with their updates, maybe Push will work better than it would have.

My question is, with several Apps still in Apples Update process, and Apple saying they pretty much still need time.. How long do you figure this time to be? At first I was assured that because all of the big Apps out there are all in the Update Process, Apple has to do it soon or customers will, well, ... not be happy. And thus, making the Apps un-updatable untill Apple does approve.

Then I did some looking around, and actually this can be done. Apple has actually let certain Apps in the Update Process for over 260+ Days. So if Apple needs time, then our Apps won't be updated anytime soon.. at least by my theory.


What are your speculations?
How long do you think Apple will keep these Apps in "Limbo"?
When do you think Apple will release Push Notification Apps in masses?


😉

 

[ryant601]

i think it'll be this week, last week was a little out of whack with the 3GS launch. Now that they've got everything behind them, they can probably focus on fixing this.

just my thoughts

 

[jman800]

That makes sense. The new iPhone is creating alot of network issues with apple so hopefully, a week would be enough. Although, that seems to good to be true..

 

[LiquidThunderLT]

The thing is, I don't think it's an apple issue, I think it's an AT&T issue. And if that's the case, it could be months.

Thank god I dropped coin on a bunch of apps awaiting their push updates already. Fail.

 

[AHDuke99]

The thing is, I don't think it's an apple issue, I think it's an AT&T issue. And if that's the case, it could be months.

Thank god I dropped coin on a bunch of apps awaiting their push updates already. Fail.

AT&T has nothing to do with the push notification system. This mindless blaming of AT&T for everything is also over the top. Apple is in charge of the entire system. The only thing AT&T provides is the 3G network to transmit the data.

 

[ryant601]

exactly. like i said, i'd give it this week to get things sorted out. they're just as anxious to get it fixed im sure. flawless push=more apps=more revenue for them.

business is quite simple

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

exactly. like i said, i'd give it this week to get things sorted out. they're just as anxious to get it fixed im sure. flawless push=more apps=more revenue for them.

business is quite simple

I'd rather they take another 6 months to develop an unobtrusive notification system that doesn't interrupt whatever I'm doing every time I get a damn notification. It's already annoying enough with texts, can you imagine what it will be like when that stuff is popping up all the time?

 

[ZMRoach]

I'd rather they take another 6 months to develop an unobtrusive notification system that doesn't interrupt whatever I'm doing every time I get a damn notification. It's already annoying enough with texts, can you imagine what it will be like when that stuff is popping up all the time?

that's why you have the option to chose to turn the notifications on or not, and then after that you can chose which style, pending on the app, of notification you want.

 

[domness]

I'd rather they take another 6 months to develop an unobtrusive notification system that doesn't interrupt whatever I'm doing every time I get a damn notification. It's already annoying enough with texts, can you imagine what it will be like when that stuff is popping up all the time?

Another 6 months? They announced it AGES ago, and said they'd release it over half a year ago.

 

[ajnicho]

that's why you have the option to chose to turn the notifications on or not, and then after that you can chose which style, pending on the app, of notification you want.

YEah, just choose badge alert if its annoying so much

 

[mouchoir]

AT&T has nothing to do with the push notification system. This mindless blaming of AT&T for everything is also over the top. Apple is in charge of the entire system. The only thing AT&T provides is the 3G network to transmit the data.

Another reason for it not being AT&T's fault is that the rest of the world aren't on AT&T and we don't have any more or less push apps than you.

 

[ImNoSuperMan]

YEah, just choose badge alert if its annoying so much

Using just the badge alerts would make the whole push notification useless even if u add sound or vibrate with badge alerts. Do I need to flick through all 11 pages of apps just to find which one got the alert😱 And what if I m already having more apps on the iPhone which don't even show up on these pages? the only way to make badge alert work here would need me to delete all the extra apps which will be even worse thanx to the fact that you'll loose all the data associated with the app if u delete it.

Eg I have a game I've already beaten and won't be playing it any more. But once an update comes I might want to play it again. But if I had deleted it earlier all my game data will be lost forcing me to replay all the levels again just to get to the new levels. So we are stuck here with no possible choice left which won't do one damage or the other.

Apple needs to do little more to make push really work. May be add a seperate push app to homescreen which shows the total number of current unread push notifs as a badge on one corner and to make things easier have another corner to show the new push notifs for importatnt apps like IM etc. On opening this app there would be list of all the new unread notifs with an option to go straight to the app if you click on the its notification. That would atleast make it usable. Not as good as android or pre but yeah it'll be a lot more usable.

 

[mackmgg]

AT&T has nothing to do with the push notification system. This mindless blaming of AT&T for everything is also over the top. Apple is in charge of the entire system. The only thing AT&T provides is the 3G network to transmit the data.

Activation issues are all AT&T's fault. Apple is stuck apologizing, but notice that AT&T is not all over the world. The activation issue was only in the US.

 

[rKunda]

Activation issues are all AT&T's fault. Apple is stuck apologizing, but notice that AT&T is not all over the world. The activation issue was only in the US.

You could be 100% correct on this, but that doesn't translate over into the push discussion. Because person A is responsible for X, doesn't mean he is for Y.

 

[Fenric]

It's defiantly a conundrum. It's quite possibly something that cropped up during the final weeks worth of push testing (Live testing that close to the release date should of raised a few eyebrows to begin with). It interesting what the keynote speaker back in March said about why they failed to bring push last year.

"And there's a few reasons for this. Most importantly, within two months of launching the app store we had over a thousand applications, on the app store and over a hundred million applications that had been download. A huge number of developers came to us saying how excited they were about push notifications and how they were going to use it in volumes we hadn't considered.

And so we had to completely re-architect the server infrastructure for push notifications and that's what we've spent this last 6 months doing. Completely re-architecting it so its really really scalable ... So now we're good to go."

Talks about how it works and finishes with,

"And it's now really scalable and ready to go!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2slXe4JSEo​

So either they were outright lying or something unforeseeable has cropped up at the last second. I don't think we'll ever really know what has happened, but it seems to me Apple is becoming less and less punctual. If a feature isn't ready just don't promise Apple, that's the infuriating bit. I'm sure it'll come though, but leaving users and more so developers in the dark isn't going to help anyone.

 

[bbplayer5]

How can something unforeseeable come up at this late stage of the game? They just cant do it right... same issue mobileMe had. They are probably running on an OSX server farm, which is horrible at distributing load. Snow Leopard Server is supposed to fix this issue, but thats a ways off.

 

[mackmgg]

Another thing is, people had to test their apps on the GM before submitting to ensure that they were still compatible. This means apple had no idea how many would be submitted until it was too late.

 

[jman800]

It doesn't seem to make sense that Apple did not realize that this issue would come up.

Didn't they even start to realize.. "If we put out Push Notification services to devs.. they might actually use it!"

They should have known, expected and prepared. But they didn't. Thus another delay in this service. It doesn't make sense that they weren't prepared for this when they even tested it out with AIM! They HAD to have known that the servers are going to explode.

And to the people saying this is going to be annoying, you can turn them off, or just sounds, just badges etc. And as for the "Then I won't know which App is updated". Seriously?.. Im sorry Apple is making you search your 11 pages for that red "1" by it. If it's that important to you, you'd look for it.

 

[adbe]

It doesn't seem to make sense that Apple did not realize that this issue would come up.

Only if you strive to apply no wit whatsoever to the question.

 

[mackmgg]

And to the people saying this is going to be annoying, you can turn them off, or just sounds, just badges etc. And as for the "Then I won't know which App is updated". Seriously?.. Im sorry Apple is making you search your 11 pages for that red "1" by it. If it's that important to you, you'd look for it.

You don't even have to. Apple lets the developer pick the sound that a push notification makes. If you have used an app, you should know the sound it makes.

 

[jman800]

You don't even have to. Apple lets the developer pick the sound that a push notification makes. If you have used an app, you should know the sound it makes.

Yep, even with this though, People will still complain.. As to me though, this could not have been more perfect and seems like a great strategy to go for Apples Service

Only if you strive to apply no wit whatsoever to the question.

Yeah man! Thanks for that post! Love people like you who contribute to the thread with all they've got!

 

[ImNoSuperMan]

Yep, even with this though, People will still complain.. As to me though, this could not have been more perfect and seems like a great strategy to go for Apples Service

Thats not a good solution at all. Barely usable. I still think they should review this push notification system. I`d prefer the something like the way I suggested earlier in the thread. I dont want apple to go out and do exactly that, in fact I know they are capable of doing it even better than this, but the current system is real PITA. It`d force me to use the Push with only my IM or may be a couple more apps. May be thats what Apple want. They dont want us to use push notifications at all if they have no intentions to apply these push notifications.

Apple needs to do little more to make push really work. May be add a seperate push app to homescreen which shows the total number of current unread push notifs as a badge on one corner and to make things easier have another corner to show the new push notifs for importatnt apps like IM etc. On opening this app there would be list of all the new unread notifs with an option to go straight to the app if you click on the its notification. That would atleast make it usable. Not as good as android or pre but yeah it'll be a lot more usable.

 

[jman800]

Thats not a good solution at all. Barely usable. I still think they should review this push notification system. I`d prefer the something like the way I suggested earlier in the thread. I dont want apple to go out and do exactly that, in fact I know they are capable of doing it even better than this, but the current system is real PITA. It`d force me to use the Push with only my IM or may be a couple more apps. May be thats what Apple want. They dont want us to use push notifications at all if they have no intentions to apply these push notifications.

That reminds me of the Pre. The notification bar at the bottom. Don't get me wrong, I would love this, but if it was going to come, it won't come for a loong time.

 

[jlewis2k1]

I also think that Apple can utilize Push to force updates in their applications. Maybe devs can do this with their apps too?

 

[jlewis2k1]

It's defiantly a conundrum. It's quite possibly something that cropped up during the final weeks worth of push testing (Live testing that close to the release date should of raised a few eyebrows to begin with). It interesting what the keynote speaker back in March said about why they failed to bring push last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2slXe4JSEo​

So either they were outright lying or something unforeseeable has cropped up at the last second. I don't think we'll ever really know what has happened, but it seems to me Apple is becoming less and less punctual. If a feature isn't ready just don't promise Apple, that's the infuriating bit. I'm sure it'll come though, but leaving users and more so developers in the dark isn't going to help anyone.

I think what happened was that the Developers were taking too long to get their app to have 3.0 features. So, now Apple is stuck with hundreds maybe thousands of apps that need to get approved. The servers probably are ready to go, just that one small issue...