We all should be enjoying the impressive power of Push Notifications right now on a plethora of super cool apps which have been enabled with these new alerts.
Unfortunately, there is no killer app for these yet. Instead, we have a hodgepodge of little more than a dozen apps like Star Defense, AP Mobile, Tap Tap Revenge and Textfree Unlimited, among others. While all are quality apps, none of them has wowed us.
Textfree Unlimited and Textfree Lite have great potential. Unfortunately, a couple of messages have disappeared. Not a great debut for Push Notifications.
Incidentally, also not a great debut for In App Purchases either. Gokivo, the first true Turn by Turn app for the App Store was released Wednesday at the incredible price of 99 cents. Too bad you actually had to spend another $10 to use it. And that extra fee only gets you a month of service. Initially there was absolutely no mention in the app’s description that it was a subscription based model.
Well, it also came to our attention that Textfree Unlimited is also adopting the subscription model. If you buy the “Unlimited” app now it is unlimited for only a year. You’ll be expected to cough up some more money come 2010. They do mention that fact in the description but it’s near the bottom, after several references to the app being “Unlimited.” Not cool if you ask me.
Way off topic though. Now back to Push Notficiations.
Sure we expected all sorts of apps to take advantage of Push Notifications. We just didn’t expect the apps which are currently in the store to be the only ones out there. We all know what this new service was meant for – true instant messaging on the iPhone. No longer would you have to SMS notifications as a way of circumventing Apple’s no background apps rule.
I asked this question yesterday. I’ll ask it again today.
Where are the chat apps with Push Notifications?
In fact we do know where they all are. They’re all being held up by Apple.
BeejiveIM and IM+, the two premier instant messaging apps, both advertise their 3.0 versions are awaiting approval by Apple. BeejiveIM went so far as to tell Mobile Crunch the app would’ve been in the App Store yesterday. It’s not available yet. AIM also had a working beta with Push Notifications over 2 weeks ago. The beta was tested by masses of developers and on phones all over the country with reports of huge success.
But, of course, there’s complete silence from Apple. Our calls today were not returned and we have a source who tells us Apple’s private forums for app discussion are completely silent on Apple’s end when it comes to Push Notifications. Even the developers, it seems, are in the dark.
Our only explanation for why this is happening is that, even though Apple waited more than six months to get the launch of Push Notifications right, they’re not quite ready. This isn’t just conjecture. We do have some evidence in the form of missing Push Notification alerts. We have seen it ourselves and we have reports from users too. Some Push Notifications are never received. I myself never received a couple notifications for both Star Defense and Textfree.
What makes the whole situation intolerable is Apple’s silence. It really is deafening and it drives bloggers like yours truly who live on an instant Twitter/Web cycle to start labeling problems like this as an epic fail.
Well, I’m not going to label this a failure on Apple’s part yet. But I would like some answers.
I totally agree that silence from Apple side is very disrespectful. They make us wait for this feature over and over again. I think Apple should either release all IM messengers or make the statement…
Well… what else is new?
They announced it last year and silentely “forgot” about it till now… What’s keeping them from doing the same again.
… Maybe OS 4.0 will come and go, and Push notifications will still be a no go. :/
Anyway, those notifications are so not ready for real-life operation. Modal popups, come on!?! Time to copy something from the competition, like Android or Palm Pre notifications….
in reference to Gokivo-
“Initially there was absolutely no mention in the app’s description that it was a subscription based model”
thank you for blogging about that! for some reason that evidence was completely swept under the carpet and a new description was added when a flood of negative comments came in about the app reviews for Gokivo. many people are under the impression that the first buyers of this app are like the rest and just didn’t read the description. i can confirm that that info was not included originally. i submitted a complaint to apple about this deceptiveness but have yet to receive a response. What are they going to do to ensure that this scenario is avoided in the future.
As for beejive and the rest… COMMON APPLE, get your stuff together! Push was promised so long ago and now that its out they still dont have it together… ugh this is like a slow death
We reported on the story when it first appeared, I believe our news article is the reason they changed the description. A representative of Networks in Motion (developers of Gokivo) commented that they had not intended to deceive anyone, and issued this press release http://networksinmotion.com/newsroom/06_19_2009_Gokivo_Pricing.php
The are giving 1 free song from iTunes to anyone who purchased the app for $.99 and feels they were deceived.
Doesn’t seem that odd to me:
June 17th, you have millions of people downloading your news OS
June 19th, you have a good half a million new iTunes iPhone activations
June 20th/21st/22nd you start to let out the heavy push apps, just as the pressure on your servers eases out a bit.
Does anyone need reminding of how it went last year when Apple tried to load everything at the same time (iPhone OS, new iPhone and MobileMe)? Revise your history guys! This was predictable, obvious and not so wrong if one actually thinks. Beejive will come as soon as the rest will be under control.
PS
that does not mean, by the way, that I’m not checking for updates every two seconds too. Of course I am. But logic dictates that they’d stagger the steps.
Almost 96 hours (4 days & nights) since 3.0 was released
Anyone is still waiting?
I’m sure that silence is the real problem: all customers could understand that servers are busy for other reasons, and there’s no problem for us to wait a bit more for PN, but the problem is that no one from Cupertino has told it to customers: it would be better if someone from the company will define a new date for the IM’s push service activation telling this new date all over the world!
stiiilllllllllllllllll wwwaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiitttttttiiiiiiiinnnnnnngggggggg…
Push IM was one of the reasons I got a 3GS. If it doesn’t arrive then I’ll have to go all Hulk.