Even though the iPhone 3.0 OS update went out successfully yesterday, the #1 feature many users were still waiting for was the ability to receive push notifications. While a couple of apps had already been updated with this functionality over the last few days (Zillow, AP Mobile, Weather Alert, etc.), no push notifications went out yesterday. Only this morning, around 10am, did Apple enable push notifications and the first alert went out to the AP Mobile app.
After thinking about how Apple has implemented notifications, however, we think that while this is a great feature, there are a couple of areas where we would like to see some changes.
No Going Back
For one, there doesn’t seem to be an option to review which notifications have come in after dismissing them. So if you mistakenly close a notification instead of clicking on ‘View,’ there is no way to go back to see where the message came from. It would be nice if Apple could include a list of incoming push notifications somewhere – maybe even under the generically named ‘Messages’ icon where the SMS features now reside.
No Quiet Time
Another issue that doesn’t seem so pressing on a Thursday morning, but might become a problem by Thursday night, is that there is no way to set a ‘quiet time’ for push notifications. If you only want notifications during the day, but not at night, you will have to turn off notifications completely in settings. Sure, you could just turn off all sounds and maybe rely solely on badges, so you won’t be startled by a breaking news alert from the AP at 3am, but that would defeat the purpose.
We Still Love Push
We assume that developers might be able to add some of these features themselves, but it would have been nice if Apple had included this itself. These gripes aside, though, we think that push is going to be a major game changer and can’t wait for more apps to support it (especially more Twitter clients and IM apps).
Note: We will look at Apple’s push notifications from a developer’s perspective later today.
Push Enabled Apps
If you are looking for a list of push enabled apps, by the way, the good people at AppAdvice feature a nice list of currently available apps, as well as some that should hit the App Store soon.
