Filed under: iPod Family, Internet, .Mac, iPhone
.Mac push e-mail coming to iPhone 2.0?
Sometimes, we at TUAW get awesome tips from our readers -- this is proof. A certain, unnamed individual sent us some pictures of the latest build of the iPhone firmware showing .Mac push e-mail. The picture shows the main Settings page with a new button: "Fetch new data." When you click the button, you are taken to a list of your mail accounts, where you can choose between either "fetch" or "push." Gallery: iPhone 2.0 - .Mac push e-mail
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
john Faitakes said 9:42PM on 5-07-2008
Please, someone explain what email push is? I guess Im stupid, I just don't get what it is?
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Andrew A. said 9:45PM on 5-07-2008
Push e-mail is exactly as it sounds. Instead of the phone checking every X minutes, the server will send the e-mails out and tell the phone to download it.
Nick said 9:43PM on 5-07-2008
If I understand it correctly (and I'm not sure that I do), the iPhone will be sent notifications that new mail is available rather than having to check to see if new mail is available. For example, instead of the iPhone polling GMail to see if there is new mail every 30 minutes, GMail will notify the iPhone the instant new mail is available.
Or I could be completely, wrong, but that's the way I understand it. :)
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Andrew A. said 9:45PM on 5-07-2008
Is Gmail available through push also?
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Aloysius Snuffleupagus said 9:45PM on 5-07-2008
Push email is what Blackberries do. Namely, when email comes in to the server, the server contacts the handheld device and forwards ("pushes") the data immediately. Fetch email works by having the handheld device intermittently contact the server, query about new email, and if there is some, downloads it. Pushing eliminates the battery drain and network usage required to keep checking for new email. It's also fairly instantaneous. So, if an email comes in it won't wait on your server until your device checks for it. It will push to your device immediately.
I really hope they add a good Calendar push sync for .Mac.
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matt said 3:25AM on 5-11-2008
"Pushing eliminates the battery drain and network usage required to keep checking for new email."
No, it doesn't. Every time there is a single message, it requires the battery drain and network usage of bringing that connection out of idle.
If you get 10 emails per hour and you set your polling interval to 15 minutes, your "pull" email will result in four network connections.
Your "push" email will result in 10 connections and will interfere with the ~5 minute idle disconnect, basically keeping your connection active all the time. Your battery will drain much FASTER unless you get less than four emails per hour. But if you don't get email that often, what's the point of push email?
Bender Bending Rodriguez said 9:50PM on 5-07-2008
If you are or your source is trying to protect themselves you should actually block out the names in the images.
You can read the text without even applying any photoshop effects to clean it up. Why don't people know to use solid blocks over names instead of a paint brush?
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alan said 10:05PM on 5-07-2008
And when oh when will the iPhone's Notes sync with something useful instead of a dumb subfolder of Mail.app?
Fozzy Bear said 10:08PM on 5-07-2008
Gmail isn't push... .Mac apparently will be... and it will push via ActiveSync, Exchange emails to the phone.
This is important because it sends emails faster than waiting for the phone to check it every 'x' minutes but also should improve battery standby/usage time because the phone doesn't have to poll the email servers for new mail, it will be sent when it arrives by the serving. This could cut down on the number of times the phone pings the server... unless you get 3 emails a minutes every minute of the day... in which case... you're hopelessly screwed and should stick with check every 15 minutes.
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Danny said 10:22PM on 5-07-2008
It certainly looks like Gmail will have that option if that screenshot is real (which there is no reason to believe it isn't right now). How do you know Gmail will not have the push option?
dagamer34 said 11:19PM on 5-07-2008
Well, to be honest, Gmail and Yahoo! have never had a device that they could "push" e-mail to.
I'd guess that Gmail is gonna drop the "push" e-mail bomb soon.
nerdybails said 11:59PM on 5-07-2008
The battery saving statement is not exactly true, push email works in a very odd way.
The phone connects to the server over https (if you use http you should be stabbed with your handheld in the eye) and opens a https connection to the server, it then asks the server if there is any new info (contacts, calendar, mail) if there is it starts a sync process if not then it holds the session open. It does this every 30 minutes, so basically every thirty minutes your phone will connect via https a connection and ask for confirmation of the sync status the server does not respond if there is no new mail thus when new mail or whatever comes in within that 30 minute window the server responds on that session and the phone initiates a full sync.
Thus theoretically its holding open a 3g connection permanently and i can tell you from experience on my nokia n95 (ahh a nokia user get him!) that full push nails your battery ALOT faster than say putting it to do a manual sync every 30 minutes.
kleinias said 12:47AM on 5-08-2008
Gmail has been able to push (it's called IMAP-idle) email to other devices ever since Gmail first introduced its IMAP email. Gmail will push email (almost instantly) to any device (for instance a Treo using the Chatter email application) that uses an IMAP-idle mail client.
The confusion arises when Apple failed to make the iPhone's mail client, IMAP idle compliant (instead apple setup some sort of strange proprietary deal with Yahoo mail). As soon as Apple makes the iPhone's mail client IMAP idle compliant, we can use Gmail, fastmail, or whatever mail service we want (that supports the normal imap idle standard) to have email pushed to the iphone.
I've used this on a Treo with Gmail and it didn't eat batter life very much and was more efficient (providing you don't get a massive amount of email) than having the client pull down to itself every 15 minutes.
Iain Elliott said 10:18PM on 5-07-2008
I was under the impression that push mail was actually when the client connected to the server and maintained a session allowing the server to 'push' email to the client at anytime. I dont think that the server hold details of the client IP and then actively seeks it down to send emails. I thought (and could be wrong) that the client checked regularly to ensure the session is available and if not it starts a new one.
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Andrew A. said 10:31PM on 5-07-2008
That's some stupid Outlook/Entourage thing called ActiveLink. It's Pseudo-push. Push is solely controlled by the IMAP server.
Virtuous said 10:29PM on 5-07-2008
iPhone 2.0 should support .Mac email, calendar and address book syncing. These should have been features from Day 1.
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dagamer34 said 11:20PM on 5-07-2008
Err... it already does that stuff? If you sync your .Mac stuff to your computer, then your iPhone will automatically sync that stuff to. What am I missing here?
Sojourner said 11:52PM on 5-07-2008
I'm pretty sure he's talking about OTA sync.
Stephan said 11:21PM on 5-07-2008
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.
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Fozzy Bear said 8:30AM on 5-08-2008
It's not a fake... and it is under the main settings for now.
Some of us were accepted into the program to test these things... so that's what we're doing and that's how we know. However, I do agree it might be better placed under Mail.
So far it seems to work pretty well. Gmail is fetch only as of now... .Mac and Exchange are push or fetch depending on preference and it works pretty well so far. I haven't noticed any negative impact to battery life.