Article by George Norman

On 23 Jun 2009

Push Notification is a new feature in the iPhone OS 3.0 that allows you to, drum rolls please, receive notifications on your iPhone regardless of the fact that the app the notification refers to is not currently running. Perhaps an actual example would be welcomed in order to understand this better: you talk to your friends via an IM (instant messaging) client and then you turn off that IM client; when someone on your list contacts you, a message is displayed on your iPhone’s screen.

The first app to receive the Push Notification feature was not an IM client though, it was the music game Tap Tap Revenge. Not only was Tap Tap Revenge v. 2.6 the first iPhone app to receive Push Notification, but it was released even before the iPhone OS 3.0 was. Putting games aside and moving towards instant messaging, the first Push Notification-enabled IM clients have been released: AIM and Beejive.


AIM has updated its free IM app and its paid IM app to support Push Notification. The next time sometime contacts you via AIM, you will receive a notification on your iPhone’s screen – but this is not the only feature the update brings to the table. AIM, the paid version, also comes with support for writing messages in landscape mode. The free AIM version does not have this feature for the time being, but AOL said it will add it in a future release.

Beejive, the multi-protocol instant messaging platform that incorporates AIM alongside other IM clients, has also been updated to support the iPhone OS 3.0’s Push Notification feature.

If you are not an AIM or Beejive fan and would rather use Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone, then you will have to wait for Yahoo! to fit its IM client with Push Notification support. The development team behind Yahoo! Messenger has already announced that it is working hard on getting an update out there as soon as possible.

“One of the exciting new features [the iPhone OS 3.0] will bring to the iPhone is push notifications, or the ability for an app to alert you of something even if you’re not running it (similar to how the Mail app on the iPhone alerts you now to new messages). For Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone, this means you’ll get notified when a new IM message arrives, even if you aren’t actually running the app. Our new version with push notifications is not ready yet, but we wanted to let you know that we are working on it and hope to have it out soon,” explained Product Manager Sarah Bacon last week.

If you would like to get AIM for iPhone, the free and ad-supported version, an iTunes download location is available here.
If you would like to get AIM for iPhone, the paid version that costs $2.99, an iTunes download location is available here.
If you would like to get Beejive, will cost you $9.99, an iTunes download location is available here.



Tags: Apple, iPhone OS 3.0, Push Notification, Tap Tap Revenge, AIM, Beejive

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