.Mac push e-mail coming to iPhone 2.0?

Does anyone think Apple will open up the "run in background" functionality to third party apps, so other "push" sync clients can be developed?

Like say, SyncJe for iPhone, which already does this stuff?

So the cal/contacts sync so far is only with exchange? Is it available with any other services?

Well, that's a start.
Usually, when renewal time comes around, I seriously consider whether I'm getting value for cost with .mac and it usually just barely makes it past my usual hack'n'slash approach to cutting household costs.

But I was just thinking the other day (as I renewed my .mac for another year) that if there was some serious iPhone / iPT support in .mac then I wouldn't waste time trying to justify it, I'd just renew.

And if Apple was looking for a way to sell me a copy of iWork as well, one way is to make it possible for me to view (maybe edit?) iWork documents on the iPod Touch via .mac

"Fetch New Data" is really not all that Apple-like. I don't necessarily doubt that the feature will be there but I would be surprised if they used that terminology for the masses. They would more likely soften it up a bit.

Could you please check it Mail is still auto-loading images and thus giving all the spammers a heads up that i read their junk?

I seriously hope this is a configurable setting in iPhone 2.0.

Thanks!

The confusion here is a result of associating "push" with "email". They are not necessarily related.

While I am finally excited to hear about this, I'm not patting Apple on the back. This feature should have been there from day one, matter of fact, El Stevo told us we would have it. The fact it took this long doesn't put much faith in the future of .Mac for me.

If this works like Microsoft Up to Date then the following would occur. A new mail message arrives in .mac mail, then the .mac mail server (yes there is server support required for this) will send a SMS control message (control based text message which is free and just simply wakes up the phone) and the phone will initiate a sync. So in effect there is no constant open connection, just when it needs to grab mail.

I don't see how Gmail could push to a phone, on its own. The push has to come across the "last mile" by the carrier, who knows how to talk to the phone. Gmail doesn't know how to contact the phone to deliver mail to it, hence the phone PULLS from Gmail.
But any service is capable of pushing, as long as they have the cooperation of the carrier.

Really all the iPhone needs to support for .mac "push" to work is the Idle command. If they implement the IMAP Idle command into mobile mail then it "should" work with an IMAP service that supports it.

The IDLE feature allows IMAP e-mail users to see immediately any mailbox changes without having to undertake any action, which in essence means a constant connection to the IMAP server.

So why is this menu item off the main settings and not under the mail section? Apple is all about the UI. Smells like a fake to me.