All Articles Tagged push notification

Prowl ($2.99 – iTunes link) sends Growl alerts to your iPhone via Push Notification. That’s right, duck and cover, we’ve just found the nu-cu-lar option.

Growl is a well known 3rd party alert system for Mac OS X and provides heads up display of incoming email, twitter, file transfer, chats, downloads, and just about anything you can shake an “I want to know” at. And Windows users, don’t you fret — they’re working on a beta for Microsoft’s platform as well.

Prowl takes Growl alerts and send them on to your iPhone (or iPod touch), and you can configure the type and priority level you want to get. Up to 30 days of notifications are logged, and links remain active in the alerts.

For hardcore status trackers, this might just be a dream come true. For those who think one more alert will send them over the cliffs of insanity… best stay well clear.

If you do try it out, Mac or Windows, let us know how it works for you.

Since the iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak has become available, and now with both purplera1n and redsn0w coming on line with iPhone 3GS Jailbreak solutions, we’ve heard rumblings about problems with Push Notifications not working, or not working properly.

The Dev Team has noted this:

we have some remaining 3.0 jailbreak issues to investigate, including push notification

danmowchan in our forums notes this again today with regards to Prowl. Potential battery drain issues aside, if you’ve Jailbroken, are you having trouble getting your Push on? If not, has problems with Push made you put your Jailbreak on hold?

Back when Apple re-introduced Push Notification at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview Event, Scott Forstall claimed that, unlike background multitasking that could cause an 80% drop in battery life, Push Notification would only cause a 20% drop. While some debated the truth (or truthiness) of his claims, it did set the expectation that users running Push Notification-enabled apps would see lower battery life, and gave an indicator of just how much less.

So, while it too a while, now that we finally have Push Notification, and some of the more popular messengers and games are implemented it, how’s your battery life doing?

Are you seeing a hit compared to your pre-Push Notification days, and if so, is it in the 20% range? Let us know which iPhone you have, how often you’re getting Push Notifications, and how your battery is holding up!

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!]

Still waiting for its turn to get into the slow-moving App Store, IM+ is ready with version 3.1 which adds support for iPhone 3.0 Push Notifications. Text alerts, badges, and sounds are all supported, and can be individually enabled or disabled both through Apple’s Notifications Settings panel.

IM+ supports a ton of services, including Skype, AOL, MSN, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ, and MySpace. Testing it with AOL proved to be a quick, clean experience, with IM+ launching and re-connecting to their server in a brisk and snappy manner on an iPhone 3GS. Copy and Paste also worked well, albeit it only in the text input box (I couldn’t find a way to select or copy text from previous chat bubbles).

Hopefully Apple will approve IM+ 3.1 with Push for the App Store soon. In the meantime, you can take advantage of sale pricing on the previous version, 3.0 (which pushed via re-direct to email). $5.99 via iTunes.

More screenshots after the break!

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BeeJive is my IM solution of choice. I don’t use a lot of the more advanced features, but the reason I keep going back to it is just this: speed. It gets me in, working, and back out fast. And BeeJive IM 3.0 with support for iPhone 3.0’s new Push Notification service is no exception. In fact, it rules.

One of the problems with Push Notification is that while the actual alerts are speedy, acting on them is not. Take IM for example. If you enable Text Alerts, an SMS-style popup window presents, tells you the IM app has a new message, and lets you Dismiss or View. If you View, the iPhone then has to 1) close the alert, 2) launch the app, 3) re-establish the app’s server connection (Push Notification uses a different, Apple-powered server), 4) download the IM to the app, and potentially 5) issue the app’s own internal alert if that’s enabled as well.

That can be some overhead. Sure, maybe iPhone 3G S (for speed, remember) will quicken the pace, but BeeJiveIM on an iPhone 3G was impressively responsive already.

Testing it over the last couple days, alerts presented, I tapped them, and everything listed about was handled smoothly and quickly. So, again, I was able to get in, work, and get back out fast. It’s everything that was great about BeeJiveIM 2.0, plus the convenience of Push.

BeeJiveIM 3.0 for iPhone and iPod should be hitting the iTunes App Store any time now. We’ll update with the link as soon as it’s live.

Screenshots after the break!

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9to5Mac (via Gizmodo) shows Push Notification already working in the latest version of Tap Rap Revenge [Free - iTunes link] when run on the iPhone 3.0 GM developer seed. Gizmodo, of course, raises the pertinent question:

It certainly isn’t the most creative use of background notifications—the messages only pop up when you’re challenged by another player—and I’m already wondering how, when all kinds of apps have this capability, the iPhone’s exceedingly simple notification system will scale.

Since Text Alerts don’t tack, a new one obliterates the one before it. What happens when an urgent IM is replaced by “Hey, dooooooode, can haz rock out?!” Sure, badges remain, but then you have to go looking for them…

Apple previously invited developers to help test the upcoming iPhone 3.0 Push Notification service using AP (Associated Press). Now they’re ready for some IM action, and have prepared a special, 7-day build of AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to put push through its paces:

As a developer actively working with iPhone OS, we would like your help in a private test of the Apple Push Notification service. For this test, we have selected AOL’s AIM Developer Preview for iPhone OS 3.0 to create a high-volume test environment for our server.

Of course, as with most everything iPhone 3.0-related, at least news of the test didn’t stay private for long.

For a sampling of some of the screenshots we’ve received, check out the gallery after the break!

[Thanks to Rikimaru, and all the anonymous tipsters!)

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Yeah, BeeJive is totally teasing us now. Instant messaging (IM) is one of the most anticipated services when it comes to iPhone 3.0’s Push Notification service, and BeeJive aims to deliver and soon.

Best of all — (see screenshot, above) — they aim to deliver it free to all current customers. Maybe as soon as WWDC next week?

Confession: We received reports of this going back last week, but kinda thought it was known the tests were for a limited time (originally scheduled for a week, if memory serves). MacRumors, however, reminds us not to take such things for granted.

So, yep, Apple has completed the pre-WWDC beta testing for Push Notification. Is it enough to make sure the audacious system is as bullet proof as possible, given the severe problems MobileMe’s launch suffered last year?

Hey, we’re just happy Apple did some outside testing at all. (Baby steps and all that). If it turns out they need it, we hope they come back for a second round. As many rounds as it takes, actually. Push Notification has to “just work” at launch.