About two weeks ago Apple finally made the push notifications available for developers(their sandbox servers went live). It didn’t take me long to figure out how to use them and even though the documentation makes you feel like it’s rocket science it’s really not. Within about 20 minutes I had a working prototype that allowed me to push notifications from my server to my iphone and I must admit it’s pretty cool to type something on my server and have it instantly appear on my iPhone. The hardest and most painful part was I has to restore my iPhone because the iphone wont register correctly otherwise; something to do with a bug that when you restore the iPhone from a backup it breaks the notifications. A simple restore as a new phone fixes this.
After spending a few hours experimenting with all the possibilities such as message length, message badges and custom message sounds(cool) I started to fit this into my existing projects…but, I couldn’t. After I failed to find a use for custom push notifications in my existing projects I started to think of new projects that I could create that might use it…but again, I couldn’t. So, for as cool and potentially useful push notifications can be I couldn’t really think of anything useful to do with them not to mention when I did even think of a small project I kept reminding myself that I would have to continually support the server that pushes out notifications which can be costly if the app does not sell well.
If anyone has any ideas or cool uses for the new iPhone push notifications I would be interested in hearing them.
OK firstly I’m new to the iphone (I dont have one! nor any Apple product - soon to change when I get my MBP17″). So excuse my ignorance… The above presenter on the push service said no background processes running. But surely a socket listening out for incoming msgs is still a background process ? And it would have to buffer the msg(s) and interact with the receiving app in order to pop up the “badge”. Am I talking rubbish? Just trying to understand. Also, could you explain why you’d have to “support the server that pushes out notifications”. Again excuse the ignorance. Thanks for any response.
Jas.
Hey Jas, well technically there is a background process running, as with many OS there are many running but Apple does not give developers the option to create these. We’re limited to what they give us and they wont allow us to create processes in the background. Second, when I said you have to maintain a server I mean you have to keep track of users and actually send out the notifications to Apple. The way it works if you connect to Apple via a socket and then push notifications to their server and then they push them out to the phones. You have to keep track of what messages you’ve sent, when, to who etc.
Thanks for the replies (this and your others).
It makes sense to me now.
I guess I have a lot to learn! :))
I’m coming from a Symbian OS background hence my confusion on background process restrictions. There are many other differences too, but I’m hoping to delve into iPhone dev. Your site is quite inspiring.
Keep it up! Think I’ll check back time to time.
Jas.