Just this morning, our own Sarah Perez wondered if Apple wasn’t ready for push notifications yet, as only a few push enabled apps had made it into the App Store so far, but as is so often the case in our business, only a few hours later Apple first allows the AIM instant messenger (iTunes link) into the store, and now BeejiveIM (iTunes link), a multi-network IM app that was extensively demoed at Apple’s developer conference two weeks ago, has also arrived in the App Store as well. We are still waiting for a number of other apps with support for push to be allowed into the store, but it clearly looks like Apple has now opened the floodgates and more apps will probably follow soon.
Works as Advertised
We got a chance to test both apps and both work just as advertised. For the AIM app, for example, the delay between sending a message and a notification popping up on our phone was usually under five seconds and sometimes almost instantaneous. Push, by the way, is enabled both for the free AIM app, which features ads, and the $2.99 paid version which is ad-free. One problem we noticed, though (and the same goes for the Associated Press news app with push), was that clicking on ‘view’ in a pop-up notification only open the app, but didn’t take us to the actual message. We almost wonder if this is something Apple’s API doesn’t support, as this seems to be common among the push apps we have seen so far.
BeejiveIM is a bit pricey at $9.99, and the price might go up to $15.99 later, so if you really want this app, which supports, Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ, and the Jabber protocol, not is probably the time to buy it. The one IM protocol this app misses support for Skype chats, though we are hoping for IM+ with support for push notifications (iTunes link to the free version) to be allowed into the store in the next few days.
Finally!
We are very excited to see the first new batch of push notifications in the App Store, though we would still like Apple to make a few changes to the way the iPhone handles these messages (including the ability to set a ‘quiet time’ during which notification are ignored). However, as long as Apple doesn’t allow applications to run in the background, push notifications are the best alternatives and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with this new feature.
