iPhone OS 3.0 & Notifications – How Much Do You Want To Be ‘Pushed’?
My earlier post “ on testing out iPhone push notifications with the Agile Messenger IM app “ has got me thinking about how I ‘d like to make use of push notifications generally. I have a feeling that push is going to be a little like Location Services, at least at first “ with every app under the sun offering it up.
And after just a little mulling this over, I think that there are probably very few apps that I want pushing notifications to me
As I mentioned in the earlier post, I think push notifications are crucial for IM apps “ they are crippled without them. I definitely want push turned on for Agile Messenger. Thing is, I started flicking through my home screens and thinking about which apps will probably offer push to me, and how many I ‘d possibly want to use it with. Here ‘s a very quick rundown of my thoughts on the types of apps that may offer push and whether I ‘ll be taking them up on the offer:
- Twitter apps “ I think I would not want push from a Twitter app, unless I can be much more specific in my settings “ as in, I don ‘t think anybody wants to get an alert every time anyone you follow tweets (I follow over 1,000 users). The only way I might use push for these is if you could limit alerts to only when you receive a direct message, or possibly only those and ‘mentions ‘.
- Other Social Networking apps “ Facebook, Friendfeed etc. “ no thanks “ just too much activity and very little or nothing I need to know urgently
- News apps “ are these going to offer to alert you when there is new / unread content? If so, no thanks again. I ‘ll catch up on news often enough on my own.
- Productivity Apps “ task manager apps, calendar apps, note-taking apps, and similar “ if I used these more within groups, with shared items etc, I might find this useful. Right now I don ‘t though, so an alert when a new note / task etc is created is just not needed, since I ‘m the one who did the creating.
- Games “ are some of these going to offer to alert us when a high score has been surpassed, or when new levels are available for in-app purchase. Absolutely no thanks.
- RSS reader apps “ yikes, no way “ I follow way too many feeds.
- Books apps “ will Kindle and other eBook apps offer to send alerts when a new title by an author I ‘ve got in my collection is released or put on sale? Or just when a new sale is on or similar. I can definitely get by without that.
- Music apps “ same as above.
- Travel / Places of Interest apps “ will Yelp or others like it offer to alert me when there ‘s a new review of a favorited restaurant, or similar? Again, just don ‘t really need that.
So I ‘ve gone through my little quick list, and I just cannot think of very many apps at all that I * do * want push notifications from. I ‘m probably forgetting some, or being too harsh in my initial thinking, but I just imagine myself using Voice Control a heck of a lot on the new iPhone 3GS to say ‘piss off alerts ‘ if I don ‘t strictly limit the number of apps allowed to use them.
How about you all? Looking forward to using push notifications a lot? What sort of apps will you use them with?
I want my weather app to notify me of weather warnings. Maybe a setting in Facebook to be notified for specific events.
Skype should notify me of voice mail or missed calls – or if someone is calling now and I don't have the app running.
"What's on TV" should notify me of shows I like coming on soon.
Skype would be awesome if it could push if some is callling you. Also for news and rss feedsni wouldn't mind a badge being put on the app. Games would be cool if it could alert me when a buddy wanted to play a game.
I'd also like an IM program that could push notification of a message. I agree with the weather warnings as well. Amber alerts & important breaking news in my area are a few more.
My only issue is — these could all be done NOW with text messages from online services that do NOT require apps. I was under the impression that push could activate an app that could then do something — i.e. a notification comes from Skype that a call is coming in, so the app wakes up and starts ringing. Or an IM program gets a notification of an incoming message, wakes up, and takes action (maybe a "I'm not at the phone right now" message if so configured).
I haven't looked that deeply into push yet but doesn't the dialog notification option provide some choice of what to do in response to the notification (which should be programmatically accessible for customization)? Other than that, I think they would have to add a new notification type that actually wakes up the application explicitly and pass the notification to the app for it to handle it. Maybe we'll see it in Push 2.0.
Though, I would imagine it would still ask you before doing so (which would just bring us back to the dialog notification type). Besides Skype, I don't think people would appreciate being forcefully taken out of the application they were running because they received a notification that needs to be handled.
All the dialogs / popups I've seen so far offer 'Close' or 'View' – but I would imagine you're right that this may be accessible for devs and there may be other choices as appropriate for other apps once we finally start seeing a few more come out with push enabled.
I am fine with the alerts not taking you straight to the alerting app, but rather giving you a quick choice to go to them or just close the alert.
Good thoughts Andre, Pete, joe – I might want the weather alerts sometimes (during Tornado seasons) and Skype for sure.
Joe – I hope your impression proves to be the case, but not sure it will …
I want push with tons of flexibility and the ability to set rules. Badges (no sound or popups) will be my favorite. I think.
Facebook already updates the badge when you have a new message but it's not real time. If I get a badge update I would love for it to go away when I check the message on the computer.
I want a news apps with push rules. I can choose categories and enter keywords.
I always forget about new movies. I want to know when a new trailer is released or it's in the theater.
Fedex package delivery notifications for the small business owner.
ATT lets me set rules for my bill. i.e. I reach my text message limit.
A google/yahoo-type questions apps and i get notified with responses
When a stock reaches a certain point.
a careerbuilder-type of notification instead of just email. I may be watching for postings at a certain company and want instant notification.
paypal receipt of payment
Kevin – those are some good ideas, thanks for sharing them. I like badges the best of the limited set of options we have, but think they'll require some home screen re-arranging for me, so it's easier to see them without lots of screen flicking …
Id want IM clients definitely, some games that I can play multi player with friends would be really nice!, facebook and myspace would be good for me, otherwise… no..
I really want push gmail thats what I want!
Push Gmail – oh yes, you and me and many, many others I think.
Doesn't gmail already support the push protocol in IMAP? Or are you specifically referring to seeing the other types of notifications rather than the standard Mail App badge?
I was crossing wires – talking about full Gmail push in terms of mail syncing / fetching method. Thus far Google have enabled this for Contacts and Calendar, but not email.
By the way where did you get Agile with Push?
I have been using a pre-release beta, and helping beta test the push-enabled upcoming version.