Push Notification Remains MIA in iPhone 3.0

UPDATE: This post corrects a post written and originally published on 4/18 that contained incorrectly attributed information.

The single most talked about and demonstrated feature of iPhone 3.0 software at Tuesday’s launch event — push notification — remains absent from the beta release distributed to developers, with no indication thus far forthcoming from Apple when it will become available.

Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior VP for iPhone software spent over half an hour Tuesday extolling the virtues of push notification and explaining why — although promised by the company over a year ago — it has taken so long to roll out. Developer “demand we didn’t anticipate” caused Apple to “completely re-architect the server infrastructure for push notification,” he said.

Developer representatives from a half dozen companies were trotted out for a dog and pony show to demonstrate how amazing push notification is going to be in the next version of iPhone software, and yet, despite distributing documentation of how the service is intended to work, Apple has yet to provide developers a method for implementing and testing push notification in their apps.

Forstall spoke plainly in his presentation Tuesday (see 26:45 into the video) “It is now really scalable, and we’re ready to go.”

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Apparently not.

Calls to Apple for explanation were not returned as of press time, but we’ll be sure to keep readers apprised as this story develops.

9 comments »

About the author

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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Posted in Apple, iPhone, News, Software |

Michael J.
“although promised by the company over a year ago”
Actually, it was introduced last summer, promised to developers by last September and out to users by the end of the year. So it is 6 months late to developers, not “over a year”.
Jeff
How does “We’re ready” translate to “the service is turned on”?
The 2.0 beta last year contained the app store even though the store wasn’t turned on yet at that time. I’m sure Apple would have also described the store as “ready to go” at that point.
It’s ready, it’s just not online. Why is this a “story” that needs updating?
Sinister Joe
If only there was some term to describe software that wasn’t 100% functional yet. I bet it would clear up a lot of the confusion.
http://cultofmac.com Lonnie Lazar
@Jeff:It’s not analogous to the AppStore at all. Push notification is funtionality that Apple told developers is available to them and it’s not. Developers have no way of testing the actual functionality of their apps, no way of seeing how their apps will work in the real world that Apple just spent six months “re-architecting” to support push notification. This is not “we have a new way to distribute your software but the store is not going to be live for a few months.” This is a huge issue for many developers who are going to rely on push to bring added value to their apps and it’s very curious Apple would spend so my h time on it Tuesday and not make it available to developers to implement or test.
Brian Cline
@Joe: Actually, there IS a term to describe software that’s not 100% functional yet. It’s called a beta.
The iPhone OS 3.0 SDK and iPhone OS 3.0 software are very clearly labeled as betas. To me as a developer, this means the software will definitely change before release. At no point during the presentation did I interpret this to mean that this beta would be the only release of the 3.0 SDK and OS prior to general release. Look at how many beta releases of the first SDK we had before it was finalized.
I could be wrong, but to me it sounded like “we’re ready” was in reference to having solved the infrastructure challenges that Forstall mentioned, not necessarily for all developers to begin using it – though the difference is usually a fine line, I will admit.
I would be interested to know what exactly you saw or did not see in the OS image that led you to believe that the push notification service was entirely absent.
http://www.kmzinteractive.com Matt
So, if Push isn’t live yet, how are developers going to develop the function and test it prior to sending their apps to the store?
Timothy
@Brian: Uh, I believe Joe was being ironic.
Brian
@Timothy: Only the line indicated was directed at Joe. Everything else is directed at Lonnie. He makes it sound like he was expecting a full release and full SDK out of the 3.0 beta. No matter what Apple does or the concessions it makes, some people will never be happy and will always find something to bitch about. He seems like one of those folks, based on all the negativity in the original post.
http://cultofmac.com Lonnie Lazar
@Brian: I think it’s worthwhile to put oneself in the shoes of a developer with an app that would be immeasurably more useful and valuable when push notification is part of the iPhone OS.
This developer has been hearing from Apple for many months that push notification “is coming.” This developer sat in on or watched the video of the 3.0 presentation, at which Forstall spent more time talking about push notification than anything else and said, “it’s ready to go.” This developer received his or her copy of the SDK that night and push notification was nowhere to be found other than in documents describing its theoretical implementation under 3.0. This developer is still waiting for some method and mechanism for implementing push notification in his or her app, is still waiting to be able to test — not deploy, but test — his or her application with Apple’s push notification infrastructure.
The fact that the 3.0 SDK is in beta has nothing to do with it. Push notification is not even part of the beta, as yet; it is a theory. It is vapor.
I don’t think of myself as generally negative toward Apple at all. In fact I feel I am a genuine, effective evangelist for Apple, both on this blog and in real life. I have sold a lot of gear for Apple to people who have bought the company’s products based on my recommendation.
I feel a gripe about the absence of push notification from the 3.0 SDK, especially in the light of the big deal made about it at the media presentation, is legitimate. You disagree. That’s what makes a horse race.