Getting pushed around on the iPod Touch

Ever since the Apple iPhone App Store came out, there has been one feature request that's existed above all others. True multitasking. It doesn't seem like a big deal, every other device does it. But Apple avoided it for a lot of reasons. Mainly performance and battery life. Background apps take processor cycles and therefore reduce speed and battery life. There was also the issue of stability. Not allowing background apps allowed iPhone OS to be the silky smooth experience that iPhone users expect.

The problem is that applications running in the background offer real user benefits. Mainly, a background application can notify you of events - such as an incoming instant message. IM programs are infinitely less useful when they can't run in the background. Things like that.

Apple, being Apple, came up with an innovative solution for iPhone that offers the best of both worlds - a push notification service. The applications quit on the phone, but there is a push notification server that tells the phone that there is an event - like an IM - for a specific application. It's an innovative solution that offers the best of both world and if you're interested, I'm sure you've read how it works.

More relevant to my interest, as one of the poor unfortunate souls who lives outside of the might death star (AT&T)'s coverage area, is how push notifications work on the iPod Touch. The iPod touch is a fantastic little handheld media player and more that runs the iPhone OS and a 32GB model can be had for had for as little as $279.99and offers a really excellent value as it is cheaper than the competing Microsoft Zune HD, which doesn't feature the App Store and widely supported developer platform. The iPod touch features a WiFi connection, but obviously not cellular data.

I finally decided to play around with trying to get some push notifications on my iPod Touch. The experience - iffy. I tried four applications that support Push notifications - Fring, Nimbuzz, AIM Free, and Yahoo! Messenger.

First, Fring. I'd played with Fring before push notifications and thought it was a piece of junk. My opinion hasn't changed. It continued to show my Google Talk contacts at the same status they were last time I used it a long long time ago. Fail. Removing and reinstalling didn't fix this. Conclusion - Fring is just broken. I'd tried Fring on Symbian before and was just as unimpressed - it crashed constantly.

Next up was Nimbuzz. It actually appeared to work, that was a big thumbs up. It got pushed successfully most of the time. I had no real complaints if it was my only messenger. Facebook push notifications didn't work properly - you couldn't reply if a chat was received by push notification - however, I've never seen a multi-IM that works properly with Facebook. Heck, Facebook's OWN website barely works half the time so I can't blame Nimbuzz. But I took it off - the pushes failed part of the time, and it interfered with the desktop versions of some chat programs like Yahoo! I figured I'd be better off trying to use only official chat clients. It worked okay, but I missed some pushes and I didn't like how it interfered with chat on the desktop. It had to go.

Next I decided to try AIM. It worked a charm compared to the others, no interference with the desktop app, worked smoothly, just nice. But it still missed some push notifications. That was concerning. And I only have one AIM friend.

Finally, Yahoo! Turns out Yahoo!'s own program causes the exact same problems that Nimbuzz causes - specifically you can only be logged in from one place at a time. Boo to that. And guess what? It *STILL FAILS* to receive push notifications sometimes! Plus side - it has the nicest ring tone (none of these apps let you change the ringtone) and it has smiley faces!

My conclusion? Push is somewhat broken at least to an iPod Touch - you will miss some notifications that should exist. I don't mean that they come later - that's to be expected on a WiFi device (especially since WiFi is turned off when the screen is locked, so you'll only get notifications when the device is actually on - or locked and charging). I mean they don't come. And there's a serious need for better chat clients.

Sure, it's nice to get pushed around in this way. But it needs better reliability and software support. Maybe next software version :)

UPDATE - Today I'm not seeing any missed pushes or push failures. Maybe Apple's servers had a problem last night? Doesn't change that the problem is there though...