Apple Misses iPhone Push Notification September Deadline

So here I’m in Neeeew Yooork. Teeeeerrific! (That’s my Andy Warhol impersonation). One of the first things I did this week was to get a US mobile phone contract, and since I was there, what the heck, I replaced my broken-screen iPhone with a brand new iPhone 3G–which required a $US500 deposit because I have no credit history in this country. But I digress. The important thing is that I discovered that one of the best things about this phone–the one that truly made it a BlackBerry killer–didn’t work after I tried it: Push notification services are not working yet.

After buying the iPhone I remembered that I could get annoyed every five seconds with its built-in push mail. I checked the preferences and I saw Push was turned on. Then I waited.

I waited. And waited. And then waited some more. But nothing arrived. Push wasn’t working.

In fact, according to reports in support forums, the whole thing is not working well yet. But what’s not working at all is the Push Notification services that Apple promised to developers. Apple has yet to put these online, so third-party applications can receive information from the network in the background, in real time, without having to waste battery life or processor power pooling the servers every few minutes.

Apple was supposed to have the Push Notification service in place in September, but September has passed and there is no fix in sight. Hopefully it will come out soon because, for businesses, developers, and people addicted to instant-everything, at this point the iPhone is not the solution they were looking for.