Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Someone please explain what "push" means?
- Thread starter c073186
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It means that email is automatically sent to your phone as soon as the mail hits the server, without having the phone (or whatever device) set up to check for mail periodically (called "pull"). For most, it's not that important, but in a business environment, push is huge.
Its like someone wanting to jump off a building but is scared. You just get tired of it and push him off lol. Seriously, email and stuff is just automatically pushed to your iphone like johnnotbeatle said.
On a mobile device (like the iPhone), it saves battery, as having the phone manually check every minute uses up battery pretty quickly. With push, the radio's in a receive mode only, and not polling the mail server constantly, so it just receives incoming messages on its own.
I don't need it for business and in the past I never had mail auto check on my iPhone, but now with MobileMe push, I like the idea of having it there on my phone so that if I unlock it, I know right away how many unread emails I have etc. But better yet, I like the contact and calendar instasync since it I charge my phone in the kitchen and rarely connect it to my iMac.
in the case of mobileme, it isn't just for email, there's push contacts and push calendars. it's especially useful when you have multiple devices, where making a change on one device is automatically updated on all your other devices instantly. there's a guided tour about mobile me on apple's website here.
It's one of those things on a desktop computer is essentially transparent to the user if you have your mail client set to connect and check for mail <=5 minutes. Even in a business environment, the first thing most people do when handed a computer with an Exchange mail client (Exchange is push) is turn off all those notifications because you don't necessarily want to know every time you get an email, the moment you get it. The iPhone does it subtly, though, only vibrating -- which you can turn off by turning off vibration and/or new mail notifications -- when it receives a new e-mail while it's locked in standby mode. (I have noticed, however, this is inconsistent; sometimes when my phone is in standby mode I get both the vibration and the new mail sound, sometimes just the vibration.)
On a mobile device, push saves battery life because it only connects for mail (or, in the case of MobileMe, calendar items, or contacts changes, or web bookmarks) when the device is alerted there's something new. Pull, it goes out over the cell data network or WiFi network if available every however minutes you set it, whether there's anything new or not.
Overall, it's handy for non-business purposes for iPhone users because you don't have to, if you don't want to, manually check mail or suffer the accelerated battery drain of automated regular connection to the mail server.
Note, also, the term JohnNotBeatle uses for the opposite of "push", he calls it "pull", is the industry-standard term. However, Apple calls the opposite of push on their devices and services "fetch" for whatever reason.
Ideally, a push would mean that every device (iPhone, Mac, PC, whatever) that you set up with the same account in MobileMe would receive the same e-mail alerts, calendar schedule changes, and contact edits more or less instantly, instead of checking for them according to a fixed schedule (every 5, 10, 15 minutes, etc.).
Any device that made a change to information that MobileMe handles would propagate it to all the others.
But it isn't quite working like that atm.
Any device that made a change to information that MobileMe handles would propagate it to all the others.
But it isn't quite working like that atm.
On the desktop, you can set mail to check every minute. However, the iPhone will only check every 15 minutes. With push, they are displayed instantly. Not a huge deal, but nice.
The bigger deal is the push contacts and calendars (for me). Personally, I do not sync my phone every day and usually just use a charger by my bed. Because of this, my calendars and address books are often not synced, and I have actually missed appointments because of it. Now, no matter where you make a change, it will be "pushed" to every other device, so you don't have to sync to get those changes.
Isn't " Push" very similar to just sync with old .mac????
I always had all my macs set up to automatically sync with .mac.
isn't this just like " Push calenders" " Push contacts" etc?
other than " push " to the iphone, I don't see much difference.
Am I missing something?
I always had all my macs set up to automatically sync with .mac.
isn't this just like " Push calenders" " Push contacts" etc?
other than " push " to the iphone, I don't see much difference.
Am I missing something?
Not the same at all. Sync is either manual or on a schedule. Push requires no user action nor schedule. It populates to your devices as the items are created.