

iPhone Push Notifications, dead and buried; How Apple erased pieces of history - kevinelliott
http://www.macworld.com/article/138468/2009/01/notifications_op.html?lsrc=rss_main

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Zev
Or maybe they (the folks at Apple working on this problem) don't want to run
into MobileMe v2.0 and are taking their time to make sure it's (push) is done
properly instead of having a mob of 10 million+ people pissed off at them. You
know, just maybe.

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smoody
Thank you. I completely agree. People get pissed because Apple introduced
MobileMe before it was ready and then they get pissed because Apple is taking
their time to get the push service implemented properly.

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vetinari
They left it out for a very good reason.

Basically, you have only two ways to notify device on the cellular network
about some event: OTA-Push and SMS.

OTA-Push is quite nice in it's capabilities, except that you need gateway with
your cellular provider (for a fee, of course). The thing with OTA-Push is,
that most cell providers didn't implement it since its specification in 2001.

The another way to notify the device is sending SMS. They are not exactly
cheap either and this may be well the reason, why OTA-Push is not implemented
- why to kill the golden goose?

There are hacks, that avoid OTA-Push and SMS. You can go ActiveSync route and
keep long lived TCP connection open, but look what it will do to your battery.

You cannot connect from server to the device. You know only IMSI, but not IP
address (that's what OTA-Push is doing: translating IMSI to IP), or the device
may even not have IP address or if it has one, it will be behind NAT.

So today, you have two choices: killing your battery fast or do with SMS. That
is not acceptable to Apple and the networks are not going to change. You
better get to live with this situation.

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bvttf
I (almost) CALLED IT! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267446>

