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I already understood there was a "workaround", I just wanted to know why that was the case. And the reason is because the GMail option when setting up email on an iOS doesn't provide full GMail functionality.

There were two important points in your post, yes you asked why you could not just click gmail, and push a button for push. It was answered, was made available after the fact and apple just has not put in a button.
You also said gmail cannot be pushed to the iphone. People corrected you, however you appear to be the type of person who cannot be mistaken, incorrect, misinformed, or just plain wrong, so you have some pathological need to call it a "workaround" and say that means you were right all along and that a person cannot push gmail to the iphone. Calling it a workaround doesnt change that a person can easily get push gmail. Call an apple a watermelon and its still an apple. Getting notified on your phone the instant email comes in to the gmail server is by definition pushed. If it required downloading an app, or hacking your phone then that would be a workaround.
Regardless of how, I have push gmail, and it shows up in my notification center too, so I am happy.
 
There were two important points in your post, yes you asked why you could not just click gmail, and push a button for push. It was answered, was made available after the fact and apple just has not put in a button.
You also said gmail cannot be pushed to the iphone. People corrected you, however you appear to be the type of person who cannot be mistaken, incorrect, misinformed, or just plain wrong, so you have some pathological need to call it a "workaround" and say that means you were right all along and that a person cannot push gmail to the iphone. Calling it a workaround doesnt change that a person can easily get push gmail. Call an apple a watermelon and its still an apple. Getting notified on your phone the instant email comes in to the gmail server is by definition pushed. If it required downloading an app, or hacking your phone then that would be a workaround.
Regardless of how, I have push gmail, and it shows up in my notification center too, so I am happy.

Of course you can get GMail to push to an iOS device, as long as you set it up as an exchange server rather than selecting the GMail option. I had/have no idea what an exchange server is, so to my mind selecting the GMail option when invited to do so is the correct option. However, by doing so, you miss out on push functionality. On a WP7 or Android device you just input the account details, and it automatically works out the best way to setup the account (which in the case of a GMail account is push enabled) so to me it just looked like there was something wrong in iOS that was stopping my mail being pushed to my iPhone and iPad.

The only thing wrong is that by selecting the GMail option, it doesnt push.
 
Of course you can get GMail to push to an iOS device, as long as you set it up as an exchange server rather than selecting the GMail option. I had/have no idea what an exchange server is, so to my mind selecting the GMail option when invited to do so is the correct option. However, by doing so, you miss out on push functionality. On a WP7 or Android device you just input the account details, and it automatically works out the best way to setup the account (which in the case of a GMail account is push enabled) so to me it just looked like there was something wrong in iOS that was stopping my mail being pushed to my iPhone and iPad.

The only thing wrong is that by selecting the GMail option, it doesnt push.

Like i said, I got push gmail on my iphone, Im happy.
 
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Of course you can get GMail to push to an iOS device, as long as you set it up as an exchange server rather than selecting the GMail option. I had/have no idea what an exchange server is, so to my mind selecting the GMail option when invited to do so is the correct option. However, by doing so, you miss out on push functionality. On a WP7 or Android device you just input the account details, and it automatically works out the best way to setup the account (which in the case of a GMail account is push enabled) so to me it just looked like there was something wrong in iOS that was stopping my mail being pushed to my iPhone and iPad.

The only thing wrong is that by selecting the GMail option, it doesnt push.

Ok, reading your responses seem to only frustrate me as you seem to be refusing the common logic. So I'll try to explain this way.
iOS came out before your beloved WP7 or Android. At that time, there was no option to use Gmail via Exchange. Not at all. Later on Google offered this as an option. Got it still? Gmail now has 2 options for retrieval. Neat huh?
Android comes along, and uses the Exchange option as the default. But it doesn't tell you that. It just says "Gmail". So what you're thinking is that on iOS its a work around. When in fact its the exact same way that Android is doing it. Except iOS still has the original default way of connection.
WP7 also uses the activesync as its default method.
So you see, there is no "work around" at all. All 3 are using the exact same method available for connection and also to provide push services. iOS isn't working around anything.
But it seems like you're complaining that the "Gmail" selection on iOS isn't the activesync by default. And you're then incorrectly claiming the Exchance method is a work around.
Well if its a work around, then both android and wp7 are also using this workaround.
Do one of these:
If this bothers you so much, just stick to wp7 or android. You'll be happier and stop complaining over something so very freaking stupid.
Or, pretend the "Gmail" option doesn't exist and the "Exchange" actually says Gmail on your iOS device.
Either way, let it go brother. Because man, its gone.
 
Of course you can get GMail to push to an iOS device, as long as you set it up as an exchange server rather than selecting the GMail option. I had/have no idea what an exchange server is, so to my mind selecting the GMail option when invited to do so is the correct option. However, by doing so, you miss out on push functionality. On a WP7 or Android device you just input the account details, and it automatically works out the best way to setup the account (which in the case of a GMail account is push enabled) so to me it just looked like there was something wrong in iOS that was stopping my mail being pushed to my iPhone and iPad.

The only thing wrong is that by selecting the GMail option, it doesnt push.

You seem to still be missing the point!

Of course those phones will work "automatically," it is their companies native technologies that are used.

If you set up a mobileme account on the iPhone, it works automatically too (push and all)! Try setting up a mobileme email on an Android or WP7 and I bet you it doesn't work automatically (at least not with instant notifications).
I could be wrong of course as I have not used either Android or WP7, but this is my guess.

What I am trying to explain is that it is easy to have built in integration for in-house technologies that works automatically. It is a little different story if the technology was developed by another company. I am trying to show you that each works seamlessly with its own product. This is true for most technologies in general. I hope this 3 page thread has cleared all this up for you!

Edit: Also the post above mine is worth reading!
 
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Ok, reading your responses seem to only frustrate me as you seem to be refusing the common logic. So I'll try to explain this way.
iOS came out before your beloved WP7 or Android. At that time, there was no option to use Gmail via Exchange. Not at all. Later on Google offered this as an option. Got it still? Gmail now has 2 options for retrieval. Neat huh?
Android comes along, and uses the Exchange option as the default. But it doesn't tell you that. It just says "Gmail". So what you're thinking is that on iOS its a work around. When in fact its the exact same way that Android is doing it. Except iOS still has the original default way of connection.
WP7 also uses the activesync as its default method.
So you see, there is no "work around" at all. All 3 are using the exact same method available for connection and also to provide push services. iOS isn't working around anything.
But it seems like you're complaining that the "Gmail" selection on iOS isn't the activesync by default. And you're then incorrectly claiming the Exchance method is a work around.
Well if its a work around, then both android and wp7 are also using this workaround.
Do one of these:
If this bothers you so much, just stick to wp7 or android. You'll be happier and stop complaining over something so very freaking stupid.
Or, pretend the "Gmail" option doesn't exist and the "Exchange" actually says Gmail on your iOS device.
Either way, let it go brother. Because man, its gone.

Yes I understand that now (hence I started this thread to begin with to find out why) and I guess the assumption is Apple will update iOS so that when the GMail option is selected, it will select the correct push service for you automatically.

Of course those phones will work "automatically," it is their companies native technologies that are used.

Yes I understand that now courtesy of some helpful people who took the time to explain that.
 
I could be wrong of course as I have not used either Android or WP7, but this is my guess.

I don't know for sure either, but I would agree with your guess. Apple uses their own Push technology, so I would assume (rightly or wrongly) that it doesn't work seamlessly, if at all. Just adding my two cents. ;)

I guess the assumption is Apple will update iOS so that when the GMail option is selected, it will select the correct push service for you automatically.

Just to clarify (in case I didn't make sense yesterday) is that my best guess is Apple WON'T change this. Since the iOS has to be compatible with both Google Sync (so people that use it can continue using it) as well as Microsoft's ActiveSync (for Enterprise customers as well as new Gmail users) they need to keep both options open. If they change the "Google" option in setup it would break compatibility with people who have previously set up their Gmail using that option.
 
For those curious Yahoo actually uses a non-standard implementation of P-IMAP to trigger email synchronization via a special SMS where MobileMe uses Apple's push notifications via its servers that maintain a persistent connection with iPhones.

Source.
 
Actually Google added that functionality to their implementation of ActiveSync just recently.

how do i view old gmail messages ?

right now i have 2 gmail accounts on my iphone with the same name

the official google one,because i need to see old emails and the microsoft one for instant push notifications

how do i view old emails with the gmail microsoft exchange account
 
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I already understood there was a "workaround", I just wanted to know why that was the case. And the reason is because the GMail option when setting up email on an iOS doesn't provide full GMail functionality.

It does provide full Gmail functionality. But GMmail has this additional, add-on functionality called Google Sync, which is the push option you wanted. That additional, add-on functionality is not "full", it's complementary.
 
Is that possible that somehow without adding gmail as exchange, i could recieve push mail? I bought my iphone 3gs in 2009 and first synced it with my mac that had gmail account on Mail.app on Snow Leopard. I did never change it since that on my iphone and i always got push mail, even if in the mail settings i had Gmail set as Fetch and not Push and fetch was set to manual, neither 15 or 30 min. Could it be possible that when synced with mac it set up exchange on iphone?

The problem is that yesterday i reset my settings to default on iphon e and push doesn't work anymore.
 
You need to set up gmail as a microsoft exchange email account for it to push properly. Drawback is that you then cannot search the servers for old emails. I prefer having my emails sent to my iPhone almost instantaneously, so I have my gmail set up as exchange and have a safari bookmark for gmail.com if I ever need to search for an email.

You can use the CloudMagic app to search your gmail folders without having to go to gmail on safari.
 
My primary device is my Galaxy S3 with Gmail push, but I also have the gmail app on my iPad and whenever my S3 dings to tell me about a new message, I get a notification on my iPad also.
 
I don't know for sure either, but I would agree with your guess. Apple uses their own Push technology, so I would assume (rightly or wrongly) that it doesn't work seamlessly, if at all. Just adding my two cents. ;)



Just to clarify (in case I didn't make sense yesterday) is that my best guess is Apple WON'T change this. Since the iOS has to be compatible with both Google Sync (so people that use it can continue using it) as well as Microsoft's ActiveSync (for Enterprise customers as well as new Gmail users) they need to keep both options open. If they change the "Google" option in setup it would break compatibility with people who have previously set up their Gmail using that option.

No, it would only change how new accounts are set up. They could have a separate option...although I suppose that seems unlikely.
 
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