[Adium-devl] Steve's WWDC presentation and instant messaging

[Paul Bailey]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Andreas Monitzer <am at adiumx.com> wrote:

> On Jun 10, 2008, at 14:12, George Armah wrote:
>
> > I had a question (for Mac IM client developers) whilst watching the
> > Keynote.
> > On a regular Mac, when Adium is not running, I don't expect to be
> > receiving any ims or notifications
> > regarding messages sent to me from my Adium contacts.
> > Why is the situation different for Mobile Devices? I mean it is a nice
> > feature but isn't it more of an extra feature rather than a necessary
> > ingredient for getting IM clients (like Adium) to run on the iPhone?
>
> The big difference is that on my Mac, I can let Adium run in the
> background receiving IMs, while I do something else in the foreground
> (that's what I'm doing right now actually). Can't do that on the iPhone.
> A big part of IM is being available to anybody who wants to talk to me.
>
> You wouldn't want your mails to bounce while you're on the road
> either, would you?
>
> > Also, will Apple be able to handle the sheer volume of Push
> > Notifications that might
> > end up being generated? It would have to be doing Push for almost
> > all of
> > the major IM Services.
>
> Does Apple route all this traffic through their own servers, or is it
> handled locally on the phone? I wouldn't want to enable Apple to
> listen to my private conversations...
>
> andy
>
All that Apple is routing through their server is a notification, like a
badge to indicate that new messages have arrived.  It would be the
responsibility of the server and app to retrieve those messages.  To my
untrained eye, it appears that it's a feature that could only really be
implemented server-side, in a similar way to having a "mobile" contact on
MSN maybe.  If this wasn't supported by the services themselves, then I'd
anticipate some sort of intermediary server sitting between the IM services
and the client, forwarding notifications, and queuing messages received
without the app loaded.

All in all, I've got a feeling that, at least in the interim, we'll be back
to multiple clients, and the bad old days.  I hope not, but I can't see any
other way around it...

Bailey
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