iPhone Push Notifications, dead and buried; How Apple erased pieces of history

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.

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.

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