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Why Apple has delayed the "Push" services

B

bbplayer5

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2007
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Simple really, battery life. Push enabled on your phone drains the battery twice as fast as if it was off. Now imagine every program on your phone having the ability to push you information if they so choose. Your battery would die in a few hours.

Until they can put a battery out there like the new macbook pro or get licensing from RIM for a real push service, you wont see it.
 
I heard somewhere that Apple decided not to give us full Flash support due to battery life.

But what I don't get is why they don't just give it to us, but as an option. If we really want it despite battery life we can choose to enable it, if not we can disable it. What's the big deal?
 
The whole point of push notifications is to conserve battery rather than waste it by allowing background processes. It only requires one connection rather than multiple.

There are many threads on this subject already..
 
bbplayer5 said:
Simple really, battery life.
Click to expand...

So your theory is that they came up with this service without thinking about this?

They just started working on it, announced it to the public, and then halfway through they slapped their heads and said "D'oh! We forgot about battery life!"

I'm sorry, but that seems pretty unlikely to me.
 
Tokiopop said:
I heard somewhere that Apple decided not to give us full Flash support due to battery life.

But what I don't get is why they don't just give it to us, but as an option. If we really want it despite battery life we can choose to enable it, if not we can disable it. What's the big deal?
Click to expand...

Because people would whine and complain no matter if this was a pref the user could change.

perception and press are key.

having story after story of bad battery would have hurt apple.

+ adobe is seemingly uncapable of producing anything but fat bloated resource hungry cpu hog of apps.

so if I where apple I would not have trusted the worthless hacks at adobe with such an important tech and making it iphone friendly as well.
 
I don't know about push being a battery conserving feature.

Let's think about this.

Without getting too technical, Push can easily drain your battery if changes/updates are constant and abundant. Imagine receiving Push emails every 5 minutes instead of the usual 15 minutes Fetch (aka Pull). I find it extremely hard to believe Push in this case or others, that it would conserve battery life. Essentially, a lot of us are already on Fetch is doing a semi-push by checking our emails/etc pre its 15 minute timer.

Now, if you don't get too many changes/updates (facebook, email, twitter, etc), which I doubt many of us don't, then Push can preserve battery life and provide us with instant up to the minute stats.

Having a non-user-replaceable battery could potentially be a reason why Apple still doesn't have Push, iono.
 
bbplayer5 said:
Simple really, battery life. Push enabled on your phone drains the battery twice as fast as if it was off. Now imagine every program on your phone having the ability to push you information if they so choose. Your battery would die in a few hours.

Until they can put a battery out there like the new macbook pro or get licensing from RIM for a real push service, you wont see it.
Click to expand...

Boy am I glad somebody finally gave us an explanation... :rolleyes:
 
zachplaysguitar said:
The whole point of push notifications is to conserve battery rather than waste it by allowing background processes. It only requires one connection rather than multiple.

There are many threads on this subject already..
Click to expand...

Then you drank Apples kool aid didnt you.. Apple doesnt have push, they have glorified fetch. Your phone doesnt wait for information to be sent to it, its constantly seeking information. RIM uses an SMS to tell your phone data is available for download. iPhone keeps a constant server connection waiting for information. Push is false advertising and I am surprised they havent been thrown on the carpet for it yet.

"Push" - Apples version... does NOT conserve battery power, it drains it. Not to mention this is only with mobile me.... Now imagine all of your apps having access to this.

Its not PUSH, its glorified fetch. Dont believe me??? Test it yourself, or just go to any website that analyzes the iphones "push". It drains your battery, end of story.

I think Apple underestimated the battery consumption which is why you wont see it until the next gen iphone comes out with better battery life. I also find it funny how quickly the insults fly, especially when you actually think you know what you are talking about lol...
 
A simple explanation is that Apple can't figure out how to make it work reliably. Look at the huge fiasco they had with MobileMe. Lesson learned. Apple won't release it, till they know that it works. At this point, I think they are scrapping it.
 
slapppy said:
A simple explanation is that Apple can't figure out how to make it work reliably. Look at the huge fiasco they had with MobileMe. Lesson learned. Apple won't release it, till they know that it works. At this point, I think they are scrapping it.
Click to expand...

Which could explain the next generation iPhone rumored to be getting more processors.
 
They are delaying it because they plan to market it with the next version of the iPhone
 
I'm using push right now and I don't notice any difference in battery life. Get your facts straight.
 
i have better battery life with push than i had with 15 min fetch.

2 things that i think could be holding push back are:

1. Determining how to charge the developers for using the service. I hope it wont cost anything so that the free apps stay free

2. AT&T does not gain anything in this. This will tax the network more and might cut down on their cash cow (text messaging) especially with a push version of AIM


just my $.02
 
Seriously.... I just want a push aim service... Science damn all the cell companies and there text message fees. I wonder what the size in bytes of the average text message is compared to viewing a modestly sized webpage?
 
TheSpaz said:
I'm using push right now and I don't notice any difference in battery life. Get your facts straight.
Click to expand...


Thats a definitive test. Consider me proven wrong. All of the websites testing this were apparently wrong, you are right. :rolleyes:
 
TheSpaz said:
I'm using push right now and I don't notice any difference in battery life. Get your facts straight.
Click to expand...

Me too, I'm using ONE push service right now and battery life is fine. And since Apple will only ever be using ONE push service that shouldn't really change drastically.

People just don't seem to wrap their head around the brilliance of Apple's solution, that only ONE push service is ever running just like now. Having all my apps use push as opposed to just mail (as currently) will not make any difference for standby, and maybe reduce battery life slightly, but probably not noticeably, as data is pushed to the phone.
 
bbplayer5 said:
Thats a definitive test. Consider me proven wrong. All of the websites testing this were apparently wrong, you are right. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

When did these "websites" test the push feature on the iPhone? Was it with 2.2 or 2.2.1 or were the tests done on 2.0? Things have changed. I leave push on always and I get the same battery life as with it off.
 
From what I see if you have a .me or a .mac address you get push
to your iPhone but as far as deletions it is a type of fetch that
activates when you open the Mail app on the iPhone.

My mail notification always beats my Macbook which has a type of
fetch.
 
bbplayer5 said:
RIM uses an SMS to tell your phone data is available for download. iPhone keeps a constant server connection waiting for information.
Click to expand...
That doesn't sound right. If you read this third-party analysis (below sponsored by RIM), it shows that a BlackBerry keeps a constant "server connection" when waiting for information, too.. Just like an iPhone. The analysis shows that RIM sends the device a UDP packet to initiate a fetch, not a SMS message.

Basically, the assessment shows that RIM is significantly more efficient all-around in how it does push (as compared to Microsoft's Direct Push, which is used by Exchange Servers).

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/get_the_facts/Rysavy_Email_Efficiency_Study_2008.pdf

megfilmworks said:
From what I see if you have a .me or a .mac address you get push
to your iPhone but as far as deletions it is a type of fetch that
activates when you open the Mail app on the iPhone.
Click to expand...
That's how RIM does it too. Deletions are sent to the server the next time the BlackBerry talks to the server (i.e. gets a new email), or after 20 minutes, whichever happens first. It doesn't just waste battery calling out to the server every time you delete something.
 
The BlackBerry listens for new information and notifies the user when it arrives by vibrating, changing an icon on the screen or turning on a light. The BlackBerry does not poll the server to look for updates. It simply waits for the update to arrive and notifies the user when it does. With e-mail, a copy of each message also goes to the user's inbox on the computer, but the e-mail client can mark the message as read once the user reads it on the BlackBerry.

The iPhone polls the server looking for updates. HUGE difference. Just because you think I am wrong, doesnt mean I am wrong. RIM is true push, Apple is glorified fetch.
 
There is a lot of misinformation floating around. PUSH notifications are different than PUSH-enabled email, iCal and contacts.

PUSH notifications are small kilobyte packets sent down from a server in order to avoid leaving open a program that is using many more kilobytes per second and more battery life.

The current PUSH we have does impact battery life; this drain varies based on number of accounts and the frequency of changes in iCal, address book and email.

PUSH notification isn't here because Apple wishes to avoid a MobileMe-esque disaster. It wasn't ready for primetime a few betas back and it's nowhere near ready now unless there are some tight-lipped testers playing with it now.
 
bbplayer5 said:
The iPhone polls the server looking for updates. HUGE difference. Just because you think I am wrong, doesnt mean I am wrong. RIM is true push, Apple is glorified fetch.
Click to expand...
It take less than 2-3 secs or sooner for an email I send to my iPhone to notify me it has arrived. That is not fetch! Your battery would not last 30 minutes if it was constantly polling, or even checking every 2 secs.
Other mail services like AOL, etc are fetched.
 
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