Original iPhone owners & Push Notifications

One of the most awaited features, push notifications, requires a constant data connection.

*Rolls eyes*

It’s a shame Mr. Bohon was handed a megaphone without having any bloody knowledge.

The Wireless Application Protocol is the cell equivalent of the TCP/IP protocol: it describes a wireless protocol from the hardware data layer up to the application environment.

At the bottom of this protocol we have the Wireless Datagram Protocol, akin to UDP on the TCP/IP protocol suite: it permits the delivery of data packets to an arbitrary mobile device without having the entire WAP protocol stack turned on and a connection opened or the processors powered on. This mechanism is used with WAP Push, which essentially defines a WDP port and the contents of the packet.

The only component on the phone that needs to be powered on for a WDP datagram to be received by the phone is the cell phone receiver, and it’s related to the same mechanism used for SMS messages. While it is true you cannot receive an incoming SMS or WDP datagram while on the phone if you have an EDGE connection, and while it’s also true you cannot receive an incoming phone call while receiving a WDP datagram, the duration of the WDP datagram is sufficiently short enough it shouldn’t cause more than a fraction of a second delay on that incoming phone call, and the WDP datagram can be repeated in the same way SMS messages are repeated until delivered.

Bottom line: push interferes with incoming calls in the same way SMS messages do: damned near not at all.

The best part of this exercise in cell phone stupidity passing itself for expert advise comes in the form of the mea-culpa at the start of this article:

We have received multiple reports from 3.0 firmware users on original iPhones who are NOT experiencing the problems described, and who do receive calls without difficulty with the push notification service turned on. Cory’s original post is left as-is below; however, we no longer believe the issue is widespread or will affect most original iPhone users. Our apologies for any undue anxiety or confusion.

They make it sound like their massive stupidity was actually a real bug in Apple’s software implementation which was later fixed–and so the problem “is no longer wide spread”, as opposed to “speculative bullshit pulled out of our ass.”

I swear to God I’m sick to death of morons who think a cell phone is the same thing as a network computer–and when things start coming down the pike that doesn’t quite map onto the desktop computer realm, they start making up nonsense out of whole cloth.