No worries – those Qs are never a bother.

I think Google's servers have just been bombarded. I'd give it a day or two, and it will most likely speed up.

No, you can. I'm pretty sure. I know that I had 2 on my BB at least…

Hey Josh – thanks for the feedback. I was pretty sure that was the case on the lack of options to adjust push intervals. It's odd though – because back in Windows Mobile days I've used Excahnge ActiveSync (and set it up for clients) and I'm pretty sure I recall being able to use push and to still set how often you wanted to be checking for new mail, form down at 1 minute and 5-minute intervals on upwards. Either I'm not recalling it right, or MS is saving a little Excahnge configuring goodness for just MS powered devices.

Oh, and I ended up renewing MobileMe in the end as well 🙂

There is no option to adjust the polling interval, since that's not how the ActiveSync technology works. With ActiveSync (which is what Exchange and now Google Push use), the iPhone doesn't even poll the server. When a new message is received in your inbox, the server sends a signal (much like Apple's push server) to the mail app signaling it to perform a send/receive. This way the iPhone is only checking for mail when there's actually a new message, and not wasting power when there's nothing for it to do.

Google licensed the activesync technology from Microsoft, so basically their piping your Gmail account through Exchange. While I'm sure they're not running a big Exchange farm on the back-end, the front-end connectivity is the same.

Also, just like the standard POP/IMAP accounts, the Exchange account will update the Mail icon badge and play a sound alert, but there is no pop up alert for new messages. This is probably the only real driver now towards having a third-party Gmail push app installed. That and customizable sounds.

Unfortunately for me, I'm unable to take advantage of Google Push since I have my company's Exchange account set up in its place. However, since I finally did decide to renew my MobileMe account, I just use that for contacts/calendar syncing since you can use that in combination with Exchange and maintain separate Contacts and Calendars, and then they sync to Google through iCal and Address Book on my Mac.

AWESOME!!! Thanks Patrick, I won't bother you again about it…. LOL

Hey Frank – on the podcast subject, I can tell you we've been thinking / talking about that. Stay tuned and all that jazz 🙂

Email sounds good to me. I like Twitter a lot, but I know plenty of folks who don't and it can be a distraction for sure. My wife thinks it's silly 🙂

That sounds great. I'll be using email if I need to give u a shout about something, because I haven't made the jump to Twitter. I'm kinda refusing to. I already spend enuff time on the pc and iPhone as is, and I feel Twitter would be a somewhat big distraction for me. Maybe one day I'll change my mind. Just a personal decision. My wife sure loves it though!

Google Sync is updating the mail app badge – just no popup alert.

Thanks – but it's not all me of course. Thomas did the PushGmail post earlier, and I only found out about the Google Sync Gmail push via a helpful prod from @krapps about it.

I am a very, very happy camper whenever you want to share tips / info with us. Sending by email is fine. That and Twitter are constants for me – so they're good ways to get me usually. I have various IM accounts I look at to varying degrees as well – let me know by email if you want those and I'll share them.

Isn't this more of a Microsoft / Exchange limitation? I don't think you can even have multiple Exchange accounts within Outlook on the desktop, if I remember right.

LOL – I always feel like I'm a Scrooge-type character when it comes to push, because I really don't want that much of it. As you say, I spend too much time already checking email. 🙂