CUPERTINO - Apple announced just moments ago the addition of Push Notifications for third party applications in iPhone software 3.0 preview, a feature that has been long overdue for many cult of iPhone faithful.
Apple's push notification service keeps a persistent connection to iPhone so you can get notifications all the time. Send three types of push notifications including, badge alerts, text alerts and audio alerts. The text alerts appear like SMS alerts, badges show up connected to the app icon, and audio alerts (like AIM) play in the background.
“You know, we’re late on this one.” said Scott Forstall, Apple's SVP of iPhone Software, “There’s a few reasons for this, most importantly, within two months of launching the App Store, we had over a thousand applications on the App Store.”
Forstall made it clear, that there will be no background processing yet, just push notifications. Apple's tests running apps in the background lowered battery life by 80%. With Apple’s push notifications, battery life only dropped by 23% when an IM app was “open” in the background, listening for messages.
Apple offered demonstrations of several new applications using iPhone 3.0 push notifications that allow you to send notifications to friends inviting them to join you during game play. Apple announced the developer beta of iPhone 3.0 is available today with the update scheduled for regular users this summer. My guess is that 3.0 will be released in tandem with the launch of the next-gen iPhone in June. Much more news to come about this epic iPhone software update.
[Gizmodo]
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