IM+ 3.1 with Push Notification and Push Twitter Now in App Store
IM+ 3.1 [$5.99 - iTunes link] has hit the app store with support for push notifications. We wrote about the new version a few days ago, and for those longing for IM style push Twitter support (yep, Twitter can work via IM, and IM+ can push notify you of DMs, @mentions, etc) it’s worth checking out.
Our only question — Is this beginning of push twitter tennis?
(To head off questions, Antonioj was using fancy Jailbreak themes and Growl for iPhone notification displays, I rocked it old school)
If you try it out, let us know what you think. And if you suddenly have a big old 99 new messages on your app badge, let us know how that works for you too!
[Thanks to Icebike for the heads up!]
June 25th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
still showing 3.0 in the app store
June 25th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Look at the details below the title. Reads 3.1
June 25th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Hmm. I was wondering about a push Twitter app. I want twitterfon to have their own.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
looks like if you bought it itll show an update for 3.1 but the app page still shows 3.0 as the current version.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Haven’t seen the Twitter push work yet but the im push seems to work great. I’m psyched! Finally push im’ing. No more need to check aim every two minutes.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I like it.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I installed it turned on Push notification and holy cow my battery drained so fast. I let the phone sit there and it dropped 3% points in less then 5 minutes
June 25th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
@Japho 3 points in 5 minutes means it would die in about 2.78hrs. There’s no way that is caused by push.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
How come I still see version 3.0 on the app store?
June 25th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I have a feeling I made a bad choice choosing beejive over im+, my keyboard doesn’t always come up
I might have to buy this one to
June 25th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
nevermind. now it does show 3.1 in “version”
June 25th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
This is fake. It’s impossible for the iPhones battery to be that “full”.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Do you think there will be a push version of IM+ free? I sure hope so. It appears it’s not available yet.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:42 am
i bought and really like it! i was using it to chat with a friend on facebook and the push was instant. i did notice that my battery went down, but it could just be because i was using the phone in general. i find that texting and emailing does the same. i’ll be keeping an eye on the battery life though. i cant see how just enabling the push would cause a problem though, unless something is being sent, i didnt think the service would cause a drain of any kind.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Skype, Google-Talk, and Yahoo all work flawlessly. Windows Live messenger, flaky as usual. Sort of works.
Some times when people asks to add you to buddy lists you don’t get that message till you reconnect, (Account off slider, then on again).
I’ve had crashes while trying to add contacts.
But for the most part it does work, and as Cobra says, the notifications arrive instantly. If the app is open, its conversational – just as fast as any native IM client for the service you are using.
If Sound is on, the incoming Sound is pretty loud. I suspect that is an Apple setting, and I can’t see a way to change it.
My Blackberry toting friends are impressed, and I no longer feel like the outcast of the group.
Somewhere I have an old Jabber account laying around I will try to test one of these days.
I’m liking this. And the current 5.99 sale price is a good deal. Snap it up before the price goes back up.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:20 am
Love it. Nevertheless, will use Beejive for MSN and gtalk, IM+ for twitter and Skype
It was fun to play twitter tennis with Rene
June 26th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I suspect the price of this app will be going back up very soon.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Twitter push doesn’t seem to work in this app for me.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Twitter push working for anyone else?
June 26th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Twitter push only seems to work with direct messages and replies on this app.
Looks like they thought letting you push a timeline of friends would be too much for the system.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Ok. Thanks for the reply
June 26th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Price on iTunes say $9.99. $5.99 sale already over?
June 26th, 2009 at 8:29 am
I love skype push in this app. really nice! thanks
June 26th, 2009 at 9:00 am
It looks like I was able to snag mine right before I went back up to 9.99 So far so good. A couple of crashes while exploring the app, but that’s not a big deal. Just about every app does that every now and then. Having PUSH finally is awesome. When the phone is inactive, the notification arrives within a couple of seconds. Overall, I’m happy with it so far. I may be more excited just about the fact that PUSH is finally enabled on the iPhone than anything else. I use a Blackberry as well, so I play around with both phones at the same time, and truthfully, this is the only thing that the iPhone was missing (for my use). Besides all the contacts I have on my Blackberry Messenger, there’s not much I’m missing on the iPhone now. I got PUSH email and PUSH instant messengers. And the apps for the iPhone are a million times better — hands down. All hardcore BB users may always have something to say, but I’m impartial since I do like both, but I must also say that the iPhone is regaining my heart
BTW, been a BB user for years and iPhone since the first model came out. Lived the frustration since the days u couldn’t even send a text message to more than ONE person on the iPhone, LOL…
June 26th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Hmmm….Looks like they want $9.99 now.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Just tried to buy it and iTunes wouldn’t let me – it says it’s being modified.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:46 am
…but can you turn off Pushing of @-replies and just have DMs?
June 26th, 2009 at 10:15 am
@Josh Yes you can turn either one off and on
June 26th, 2009 at 10:37 am
This morning I decided to setup a little experiment to see how long it takes for pns to work with Twitter for the im+ app both for direct messages and @replies. I did this by sending direct messages and @replies to myself through text messages. After I sent the text I immediatly switched over to the timer. For direct messages I was able to measure the difference between when the dm hit my e-mail vs when I was push notified. I ran three tests for each type of notification. The results are pretty decent.
First, for direct messages… In the first test I recieved the e-mail in exactly 1 minute and the push notification in 3 mins 34 secs. In the second test I recieved the e-mail in 1 min 58 secs and the push notification in 4 mins 15 secs. In the final test I recieved the e-mail in 5 secs!!! And the push notification in 4 mins 7 secs.
Now on to @replies… In the first test I recieved push notification in 1 min 24 secs. 2nd test 1 min 27 secs. And in the final test in 2 min 58 secs.
So all in all this is good enough for me and I think will be good enough for most every Twitter user. Maybe not good enough to carry on a conversation like when chatting but almost. Anyway thought I would share! Let the Twitter volley commence. Btw my Twitter name is mattshall so if ya want to follow me feel free and send me some @s for testing or whatever.
M
June 26th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I love the Push feature but i have a very big BUT….
i hate that i cant answer the message withour opening the App. In the 3.0 Version of IM+ i recived a email and could answer it in time. Now i have to open the app wait for reconnecting and then i can answer. That sucks and should be fixed!
or…
Do any of u guys has a solve for this problem or has the same experince?
June 26th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I cannot confirm, unfortunately, a few good experience with 3.1 and (real) push. I was logged into Skype on a desktop computer, “corresponding” with someone in Russia, and the Push notifications on the iPhone IM+, set to the Skype account, were wildly irregular. At times, I waited 10 minutes for a notification. This is dysfunctional. Also, on one occasion, five straight crashes each time I tried to send a message, as well as occasional other crashes, and to top it off, a hopelessly eternal wait at times, starting the program more or less “cold” until it connected. If this is the best that IM+ can do, and/or the best that Apple Push can manage (long waits for a notification), then it will have to be judged a failure. I don’t know if’s connected with the source of the IM’s (Russia), but they are instantaneous, of course, on a skype chat. SMS from Russia are also instant.
Would be curious to know if others have similar delay experiences?
June 26th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
AFter the umpteenth crash, I thought I would delete, redownload, and restart. I did, and it took EIGHT minutes to connection to an account. How can this be normal?
June 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I spoke too soon. After eight minutes, it never did connect. Restarted, now I’m at 10 minutes and counting, waiting for it to connect to Skype. Oops, just crashed.
What a trash program.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
@Matshall and @TimXtreme:
Why do you guys have email set on at all?
The whole point of this upgrade was to get away from the need for email.
Turn it off, and set pop-up notifications on. In my tests, the pop-up notifications from Google-Talk, Skype, and Yahoo messenger were near instanteneous.
(Sent an Im from one account on my computer, the phone sounds and/or pop-up appears almost before I get my hand off the mouse). Tests done both on wifi and 3g.
@DP: Long time to connect = password problem or account lock-out (especially with MSN) due to log-in from multiple different IP addresses.
I didn’t do any twitter testing, but if you guys are having problems with Twitter, I suggest this slowness you report is specific to Twitter, and not this App.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
the program update and push notifications just started. how can you call something trash when its only been out for not even one full day?
June 26th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
@TimXtreme:
If you WANT email notifications, then just turn off the Push options (sound, pop-up, badges).
Then you get email, and can respond via email.
Sort of defeats the purpose of an IM app tho… :-/
June 26th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Its nice that you can see your IM messages pushed to you but am a bit disappointed, as its much faster to reply though email using the old method.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I disagree that it is faster to respond by email.
It takes just as long to launch the email app as it does to launch IM+. They contacted you thru some form of IM, and probably expect a reply that same way. Unless both parties have push mail (still not all that common) they might not even know about your email for many minutes.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:04 am
The only problem that i am having with the IM+ app is that for some reason i have been getting random shutdowns and when i send a tweet with twitter some times it shows up but then disapeers out of the chat log if i come out of the conversation and come back in, not all the time but some times.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
After a couple of days with this update I can confirm that it is extremely buggy. It looks like they rushed this one out the door just to get push out early. Every single time I Vito facebook and back it crashes. About half the time when I try to leave Twitter it crashes. Also Twitter no longer tweets me automatically now I’ve got to manually refresh it to see the latest tweets.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Don’t ask me why auto correction changed goto to Vito but it did.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I havn’t had a single problem with IM+ .. all of my problems were with Beejive and pretty much what has been discussed above…. I’m loving this app
July 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I bought two copies of IM+ (one for me, one for my wife) and both crash nearly every time we use them. I Jailbroke my iphone but she didn’t, so I know it’s not the jailbreak. It appears to be a memory issue.
I LOVE the push. That’s nice. But the constant crashes are killing me.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Skype only stays logged into service for 15 minutes after disconnecting from IM+ The vendor is aware of this and says its a technical difficulty but they dont say when or how this will be resolved
THIS PRODUCT IS FAULTY…any of those who test skype properly will notice this.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
do you guys know how much time can it keep me connected after i close the application? (for MSN)
July 4th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Been using IM+ for quite some time now. Used it before push and had problems with it deleting my buddy lists. That was resolved after a few weeks. Now with 3.1 Push, IM+ crashes often. I can reset the app, buy after a few minutes it will crash while sending an IM. No fun. I’m seriously considering Beejive. The ratings are high and it seems to be more stable at this point.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I find this App seems to have mood swings… Sometimes it works flawlessly. Other days it will crash 10 or so times before being stable enough to use. Sometimes you just have to give up! The app is a great idea but waaay too unstable! I always try to send error reports, but does it make a difference? Probably not!
July 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
It works for me… but only intermittently. I only want this for push Twitter (I don’t have unlimited SMS), but the push Twitter only works sometimes, and it’s definitely not instant by and definition of the term. My guess is that this is because of Twitter’s API limitations for going out and grabbing tweets.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:50 am
I find that IM+ only crashes for me when using Twitter. Specifically, I have encountered crashes when using the back arrow, sending tweets, and moving from screen to screen. Additionally, as others have noted, tweets sometimes disappear from my friends timeline and it appears to revert to an archived older version. I notified the developer twice and each time they had me delete and reinstall the app but to no avail. Perhaps an update will address these issues.
July 26th, 2009 at 5:42 am
hey guys, did anyone or urself notice that IM+ is eating up ur battery? it drain ur battery like water dripping… i could see that effect in my 3GS. that’s sucks…
August 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Does anyone know if IM+ has push notifications for Skype Chat? I can’t find that info anywhere…