Re:Loopt (YC 2005) featured in iPhone TV ad
by mlinsey on Sunday November 09, 2008 @04:27PM
(#358512)
When is the push-notification service that Apple talked about coming online? They'd have to go through Apple (and I don't know if they'll be charging), but it could work.
Re:Loopt (YC 2005) featured in iPhone TV ad
by ivankirigin on Sunday November 09, 2008 @09:39PM
(#358778)
I think push/pull terms get confusing. Push often means servers can tell you something. Like push email is a notification that you have email.
What this requires is a frequent and periodic push to the servers from a background process. This means the app process setup needs to change, because in my understanding, the apps can't have running processes when you're not looking at them. They start fresh every time you open them.
Push email will probably come before persistent apps. It's also more compelling to apple because it would mean they could take a bigger chunk out of blackberry.
That means a collection of what your friends are doing and where they are is usually weeks out of date. I have 30 friends in Loopt, all early adopter geeks with iphones. None have updated their status recently.
Add to this that it doesn't feed status in from twitter and facebook. You can push your loopt status to twitter though, making it a slightly cynical integration.
Part of the problem is the iphone and the walled garden. I'd love to see an unlocked iphone run loopt to constantly push my location.