AIM is a social networking powerhouse and has dominated the market since it came onto the market. The iPhone has really re-invigorated users and now AIM is on almost everyone’s phone.
So when 3.0 for the iPhone came out, there was no question that AIM would make use of Push. After close to a week of waiting for its release it finally arrived – so let’s see what’s new.
Push notifications come fast – almost immediately. AIM has really thought about the user experience since you can go into your settings and make changes that suit you, since not everyone wants Push the same way.
You can modify your settings within the app under Preferences > Push Notifications
You have the option for the notifications to:
- show the senders name
- not show the senders name
- Show full IM
- Show Partial IM
You can also choose how you want to be notified:
- Pop-up as a message
- Make a sound
One of the great things about being an American is that you have choices, and the great thing about owning America Online Instant Messenger (AIM) for the iPhone is that you have lots of choices. So you don’t have to choose one or the other, in fact you can do a combo.
Now, not everyone wants to know every time they get a message – so for those of you who like your peace, you can turn off notifications as well.
There are tons of great options that pertain to Push, but what else is new? You now have the choice of getting notified through Push, like mentioned before, or via SMS like in previous versions. AIM now also supports Landscape mode when viewing your buddy list or having a conversation.
So that’s pretty much all that’s new. AIM is still the same great service it has always been – with only a few, yet substantial, updates.
Now we just need beejive to give similar options and I’ll be a happy camper
I’ll have to agree with you on this one. BeeJiveIM needs full landscape, not one that just activates in chats. I know you can go back to your buddy list while in landscape, but its extrememly buggy and things don’t show up right sometimes. I think they should incorporate Skype and Twitter into the program as well, with full off-wifi calling like TruePhone3.0. But meh, that’s just my opinion. I don’t want lolIM+ to have features that BeeJiveIM doesn’t!
Only complaint is that it ‘pushes’ even when using my computer to IM. I than need to disable push on my iPhone, which is two taps and a scroll deep ( not counting opening the app ).
I don’t know about anyone else, but this version run magnitudes faster than the previous version. Before IM took 5-10 seconds to show up. If someone sent me a stream of 6 messages, the app was frozen for a full minute. I also couldn’t type for 5-10 seconds as a message was being received or sent.
The new version fixes all that. As much as I was ling forward to push notifications, the performance updates make this app much more useful.