Apple Pulls In Developers, AP To Test iPhone Push
One feature that iPhone users have been asking Apple to provide in the next version of the OS is push notification. To that end, Apple sent an e-mail to developers alerting them to the fact that it needed their help performing a "stress test" on the push feature.
In the e-mail, obtained by Apple Insider, the Cupertino crew asks developers to help them test the new functionality, which requires iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5.
"We have selected a prerelease version of the Associated Press app for iPhone OS 3.0 to create a high-volume test environment for our servers," Apple wrote, according to Apple Insider. "AP will be sending a high volume of real news alerts."
Those alerts will be used by Apple and developers to test the push system and determine what tweaks need to be made before the iPhone OS moves onto the next phase of development.
Push notification is a service that maintains a persistent IP connection. Third-party servers will be allowed to ping Apple's notification service, which will then "push" an update to an individual iPhone user. In many ways, it's as if Apple is sending a tweet or instant message directly to an iPhone, letting the user know about something new that would delivered through an application.
In the case of this round of testing, it's likely that the AP will ping Apple's notification server every time a news story is updated. The Apple server, then, will alert developers to the fact that there is a new notification or story waiting for them. The developers, in turn, are important to the testing process because they will be the ones receiving and viewing the push notifications.