SmartPush iPhone app dead, reminds us apps are not forever
SmartPush was a neat iPhone app from a small startup, Syphir, which allowed the configuration of clever filters for Gmail push notifications. For example, the user could configure rules like "always send me a push notification for all emails from my wife," "don't send notifications between 11 PM and 7 AM" or "don't sent me a notification if the email was sent to more than three people." Our own TJ Luoma was very positive when he reviewed it back in July, and said it was a good way for people with busy inboxes to calm down the incessant beep-beeping of their iPhones.
Sadly, one of the founders of the company has confirmed on a post to their customer service forum that the iPhone app is no more. He's attempting to keep part of the company going, but the other two founders have left, and he can no longer afford the infrastructure costs for the push notification service. He has had to turn it off and remove the app from sale. This means that people who paid for the app during its nine month lifespan (between $1 and $3) are now out of luck -- it will no longer work for them.
The sums of money involved in this case may be small, but the principles are large. The explosive popularity of the App Store, as well as its accessibility to small startups, has drawn many new companies into the fold, and we all know that a lot of apps use the iPhone's wireless networking to hook into always-on web services. Let's be frank: not all of these companies are going to have reliable revenue streams, and when they fold, people who bought their product are going to be left with broken apps and no compensation.
This is particularly problematic for apps that offer push notifications. Because of how Apple structured them, any developer adding notification support to their app has to commit to keeping servers alive to send the notifications through -- even if the app doesn't have any other need for hosting. Once the app sales saturate, the developer is left with dwindling income but a significant fixed ongoing cost hosting and maintaining the servers.
An even more complex scenario would arise if a fourth-party web service closes, crippling a third-party application. For example, suppose some new owners bought Twitter and decided that they need to focus on their own mobile apps, so they strip away the existing APIs that allow clients like Twitterrific to function. Everyone who's ever bought Twitterrific from the App Store has now paid money for a broken product, thanks to a decision that was nothing to do with either Apple (as the retailer, in effect) or the Iconfactory (as the app's developers). Should people be entitled to refunds in this case? What's fair to the consumer, and what's fair to Apple and the Iconfactory? It's an ugly picture, but as we buy more and more apps, and use more and more cloud services, it becomes more and more likely that something like this is going to happen.
The current iTunes Terms and Conditions contain a lot of clauses about "External Services" and liability disclaimers, but without consulting a high-priced lawyer, it's not clear how this intersects with consumer protection law. Here in the UK, we have very strong laws for this sort of thing; a company can put whatever it wants in the contracts, but the goods or service you buy still has to be "fit for purpose" or you can seek compensation from not just the company who made the product but also the retailer who sold it to you -- which, for the App Store, is Apple, of course. The situation is murkier in the US, where consumer laws are not as strong; however the more ... litigious ... nature of American culture means that a class-action lawsuit is probably inevitable some day.
It's unlikely that SmartPush was significant enough to provoke that sort of response, but one day a higher profile app will suffer the same fate. In the meantime, when considering your iOS App Store purchases, always keep in mind the possibility that apps can have expiry dates that you cannot see or guard against.
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SmartPush was a neat iPhone app from a small startup, Syphir, which allowed the configuration of clever filters for Gmail push...
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I got burned on that LetMeKnow app by Andrew Christiansen. He shut it down, no refunds on purchased push notification upgrades that were sold as an ongoing service. Lesson learned.
December 19 2010 at 10:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI can completely understand Syphir's situation--at AwayFind we've had the same challenges with scaling and ended up rewriting our entire backend to handle checking tens of thousands of email accounts every couple minutes.
I'm going to reach out to Syphir in case there's any way to work together on this. I really liked their app--their UI was so incredibly clean and they had some really neat features with re-appearing messages and such.
On the bright side, AwayFind's iPhone app does nearly everything Syphir did, and it has a free version. I'm not looking to be the promoter-guy, but if you all used Syphir, I hope AwayFind might help.
Jared Goralnick
AwayFind Founder
I'm sure another developer could/would pick up the slack if the remaining owner allowed it.
December 18 2010 at 5:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYeah, I always thought these kind of apps would eventually die. For a one-time fee, the developer promises to keep a server running indefinitely.
Unless the developer has a separate source of income [say, from ads within the app, or a large trust fund of some kind], the service has to eventually die.
If you just count on sales, you need to keep buying bigger and bigger servers and internet access as you get more and more customers, until sales level off or slow down and your new customers don't give you enough money to pay your expenses.
It's effectively is a ponzi scheme that you only leave by walking away from your investment.
I have know about this since early September when Husain Al-Mohssen emailed me (in response to a technical problem) that SmartPush was in the process of shutting down due to financial problems. He also promised that all personal data would be deleted at the point of shut down.
So at that point, I deleted the app and my account from the service.
With this news, the news in October of drop.io shutting down unceremoniously (and losing some of my data with it), and now delicious (tho I don't use it), I am now becoming quite cautious regarding which "cloud" services I want to use and spend my time using and learning.
There are real costs financial, and otherwise of having favorite services shut down and I'm getting tired of it. Iwantsandy broke my heart.
Please services: give all users proper notice at least.
I'm very confused. iOS after 4.0 offers local notifications, removing the need for push entirely. Why can't this app use local notifications?
December 18 2010 at 3:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyLocal Notification are only useful if you know the date/time or interval of the notification ahead of time. Since an App can't truly run in the background, it has to "schedule" a local notification before it enters the background. iOS hears the local notification and then wakes your app up (if the user taps on "view").
Thus, local notifications are great for things like calendar reminders, but not useful for things like "you have mail".
Ben
Yeh I had an idea when push notifications first appeared to make an iPhone app similar to what Boxcar and SmartPush did but the backend ended up being just too complicated to maintain. You have to deal scaling, privacy issues, etc.
I personally have a procmail/postfix/php setup to determine what I want to push based on procmail rules but this really should be part of the OS.
iOS is really out-of-date when it comes to notifications on the iPhone in general. Being able to tell iOS what notifications to get and have quiet time for some should really be built into the OS.
Or at least provide developers with client side hooks to "intercept" notifications from apps (say like Mail or any 3rd party app that the user gives permission to intercept) and determine if they should be displayed or not.
Couldn't they transition to an in-app purchase (subscription) model? $0.99/mo?
December 18 2010 at 2:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou'd think, although item 5.7 of the App Store Review Guidelines states:
"Apps cannot charge users for use of Push Notifications"
I've always thought that rule was odd. There are costs involved in maintaining the back-end infrastructure for sending push notifications, so if suddenly the sales income drops, how is a company expected to keep the servers going?
Maybe apps can't charge selectively for just push notification, but couldn't they charge monthly for their service as a whole? I believe that there's at least "text for free/cheap" app that requires a yearly fee.
December 18 2010 at 5:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI've always felt this was a big weakness in push notifications and developers reliance on them - I've actually actively avoided buying the kind of apps that really major on them as it just seems like such a temporary thing. But then that's cloud computing in general, and that's something else I avoid - my stuff stays on my computer, or goes through my webhost, nobody elses. I won't be losing any photos on flickr, put it that way.
One of the best features in ios4 is the local reminders - which means I can finally have a to-do list app which notifies me of my due to-dos on my phone without having to round-trip through someone elses server first. Very simple, but very overde.
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