If it's using intermittent/timed fetch, that runs into the latency problem (taking longer to receive notifications). Push notifications exist to solve that problem.
If it's using IMAP's IDLE, MAPI's push, or JMAP's push, that's just another long-running HTTP or websocket connection.
And this protocol (along with the proprietary push notif aggregation services it is aiming to replace) exists to deduplicate those many long-running connections into a single connection out to some hardwired server that manages the many services/connections for it.
Local notifications?
I don't see the problem here with email, it seems to work well that it is great for my use case.
When you're offline with push notifications only the latest notification gets sent, not the previous notifications. This seems by design for notifications.
At least with E-mail I can see a history of emails that was sent to me.
I just see push notifications as a flawed concept that doesn't make sense for decentralised services.
And here's your issue: your app that has nothing to do with Google relies on a centralised Google service, and depends on a proprietary library that speaks to some proprietary code running on your device.
Alternatively, your app isn't doing this, but then it risks being unreliable and stop notifying you if the system kills your app because it's been inactive for some time to save battery, or to reclaim memory, and/or it uses more battery than it could.
This post is not about a way to have more notifications: it is an answer to these issues.
Except it doesn't?
The Mail app on my iPhone doesn't use push notifications, fetch works well and I still get local notifications. No external push service at all.
> Alternatively, your app isn't doing this, but then it risks being unreliable and stop notifying you if the system kills your app because it's been inactive for some time to save battery, or to reclaim memory, and/or it uses more battery than it could.
You're saying a bunch of "issues" that never actually happened with me or anyone really, there is actually no issues here.
E-Mail is fine.
See how I introduced your case later with "Alternatively"? You saw it since you quoted me.
Fine, your email app works well in fetch mode. It took you three roundtrips to mention your actual setup despite having been asked about it quite early and despite it being a critical element in this discussion. Omitting to mention that doing this choice, your notifications are delayed.
Fetch mode is totally a valid choice, email doesn't need to be real time for every one. It will actually save battery life from what I can read: you don't need constant polling. Of course, push notifications are for real time stuff. What costs battery life or requires a push notification service on current widespread mobile devices is timely notifications. I can't help you if you fail to see how this can be useful, even if you don't personally need this or are against the idea.
Your email case is simply irrelevant to the discussion, but you made sure we couldn't notice until now.
You don't seem actually curious or interested in the topic at hand, preferring to show contempt and spite to people discussing with you here. Bu the way, frankly, loose the scare quotes, they are ridiculous.
I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve. If you hope to convince people that they should avoid them too, let me suggest that it's a terrible way of doing this. You seem to be here just to brag about how you don't need push notifications. Or to make fun of us. I flagged you, and I'll stop here.
Many services and apps use E-Mail so there is no need to setup additional infrastructure unlike push notifications. That is the complexity.
Send an email notifying me to [email protected] is more intuitive than setting up a push service.
Push notifications suffer from deliverability more frequently (regularly expiring tokens) than E-mail so much so, that when your device is offline and it gets back online, you only get the last notification. This is by design.
Having apps use fetch doesn't mean it's delayed, you can set it to a shorter duration but 5 minutes is the default.
But, it is over engineered as this is complexity that we do not need and would have a higher maintenance and setup than just using E-mail.
"hey, I just arrived at the restaurant!" You may want to know this now
The user oriented term refers to on-device notifications that pop up at the top of the screen. Those are technically just normal notifications but people like to call them push notifications for various reasons.
Push notifications in the technical sense however refer to a system for remote services to notify a client that something happened rather than the client manually polling the server for new updates. It's the difference between the client asking "do you have anything new" and the server telling the client "hey pay attention you have something new". This is what we are talking about when we say push notifications.
Email clients that automatically get new emails in the background all either do so using fetch polling or push notifications. The traditional method is fetch polling at a regular interval but nowadays most email clients support push notifications. We are discussing a tool that these clients can use behind the scenes to provide these push notifications for the email client in a battery and data efficient manner.
Gmail does push notifications. Otherwise, have to wait for the client to poll the server.
What if I don't want to use an app?
Email works with every email client that has been ever made.
It is already universal.