Existing users, 
iPhone 2.1 beta 2: why push matters
Posted 1 August 2008 @ 9am in Development, News
Apple has released a second beta of iPhone OS 2.1, laying preliminary groundwork for an early version of background push notification services and rolling out a few bug fixes.
The push notification service is a technology workaround for the lack of background processes on the iPhone that will also purportedly enhance performance and battery life for the device. Actual push testing cannot yet occur, however, since no live, public push server has been established.
Why is Push so important? Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software at Apple, has said that implementations of background applications on other mobile operating systems are flawed since users think that the applications they have closed are closed but are actually still open in the background. Running these applications in the background results in a significant reduction of battery life. With battery life already dismal when 3G and GPS services are available, push is an important alternative.
Developers will be provided with APIs that provide access to these services. These services will be available in September 2008. The service uses a central Apple server that developer servers would use to push information, messages, updates, etc. to the iPhone.
Apple’s reliability with regard to push has been called in question because of widespread issues with MobileMe. If any portion of the push server infrastructure fails, the user may end up with an application that does not work as intended.
It remains to be seen whether or not iPhone OS 2.1 will bring relief to iPhone OS 2.0 users who have struggled with a bevy of bugs and performance issues under the current iteration.
Feedback? info@iphoneatlas.com.
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1 Comment
Posted by DistortedLoop
1 August 2008 @ 11am
Push email doesn’t seem to be a problem on the iPhone (Yahoo mail’s been push since day one and it never affected battery life noticeably for me on my 1st gen phone).
Push contacts and calendars does, for some reason, seem to be an issue. I’m in the middle of trying push email on, push calendars/contacts off today to see if the 3G does any better in battery life. The day’s too young to be sure, but it looks like the battery’s doing better than it has the last three weeks with all push features turned on.
I can’t fathom why push email doesn’t eat up the battery, but the other push services do, but that appears to be the case reported by many across the net. This makes me nervous about the push notification method Apple will use for the psuedo background operations for things like iChat or whatever else might benefit from a perceived consistent network connection state.
Only time will tell, and I will update the blog with any conclusions I ever reach on my use of various push services vs. battery life. http://thedigitaldive.net/blog/?p=81