Comments on: iPhone Push Notifications are great…but are they useful?

By: Jas

Jas — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:25:34 +0000

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.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:54:56 +0000

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.

By: Jas

Jas — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:48:55 +0000

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.