CrunchGear notes that a version of the iPhone Push Notification Service API has been released to "a handful" of developers, and, according to them, will "surely" be released to everyone when iPhone OS 2.1 is released.

If you remember our WWDC keynote coverage (around 11:05 a.m.), the Push Notification Service maintains a connection with third party servers to alert you via an icon badge, custom sounds, or text alerts.

An app that uses this feature isn't really running in the background, but instead sort of registering itself with a metaphorical "hotel operator" that lives in your phone. Once there's something new to tell you, the hotel operator notifies you.

Hopefully this has little effect on battery life, but without actual, real-world use, it's hard to say.

Apple has finally posted three new iPhone 3G commercials on their website. In these ads, Apple seems to be pushing (quite literally) the features of the new iPhone 3G/2.0 firmware. Push, half the price, twice as fast, and other Jobsian quotes are in these new ads.

Just in case you were wondering, the song playing in the background of the new commercials is You, Me and the Bourgeoisie by the Submarines (iTunes link). You can watch Everyone, Unslow, and Work Friendly on the iPhone ads website.


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Many commenters and bloggers hither and yon have noticed that MobileMe lacks "true push" capabilities, even though Apple uses the "push" buzzword extensively to describe MobileMe services.

A commenter in a MacRumors thread about the subject took screenshots from Apple's site, showing they had removed the phrase "Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously." In its place, Apple clarifies that changes from the iPhone and web apps are updated instantly on connected computers, but not vice versa.

Apple also notes in a Knowledge Base article that changes "made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe 'cloud' once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11)."

That, to me, doesn't sound like "push," it sounds like "sync." The term "push" still applies, however, to me.com email, as that shows up immediately (in my experience, at least.) Calendars and contacts, though, not so much, apparently.

[Via BetaNews.]

MobileMe, the successor to Apple's lackluster .Mac service, is poised to bring subscribers into the realm of "cloud computing," one of those nauseating phrases that's been around for a while, but nobody has a better term for.

MobileMe provides email, calendaring, contact management, photo sharing, and online file storage to Windows, Mac, iPhone, and iPod touch users for $99. A family pack subscription is also available for $149, which adds four 5GB accounts to a standard-sized 20GB account (making 40GB of storage total).

Users can also add 20GB or 40GB of storage to their account for $49 and $99, respectively.

MobileMe got off to a really rough start last week, but we still don't know exactly where the hangup was during the transition. I know I'm interested to know what happened, but for now, let's just all be glad that it's working, and have us a look-see at what's new.

After the jump, join me for an in-depth look at MobileMe's features, and how they compare to .Mac and other free services available elsewhere on the web.

The addition of a Yahoo! sync framework in 10.4.10 certainly seems a bit puzzling on the surface, but after some grinding of my mental cogs, I think I've figured it out.

If you will think back to MacWorld 2007 and the announcement of the iPhone, you'll remember that Steve Jobs brought three special guests on stage. Stuffed between Eric Schmidt and Stan Sigman (of Google and Cingular, respectively) was Jerry Yang from Yahoo! who used his time to talk about the free Yahoo! IMAP "push" email that will be bundled with every iPhone.

With an email account comes a contact list, and in this day and age of do-everything service providers, a calendar usually comes with it. It makes sense then that Apple would make it possible to edit and sync these things from your desktop– thus the new framework. Sure, I can do all that from my iPhone, but do I really want to enter and tweak 300 address book entries on such a small device?

Obviously, this is just idle postulation, but I'd be surprised if something like this didn't get announced before the release of the iPhone later this month.