UPDATE: This post corrects a post written and originally published on 4/18 that contained incorrectly attributed information.
The single most talked about and demonstrated feature of iPhone 3.0 software at Tuesday’s launch event — push notification — remains absent from the beta release distributed to developers, with no indication thus far forthcoming from Apple when it will become available.
Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior VP for iPhone software spent over half an hour Tuesday extolling the virtues of push notification and explaining why — although promised by the company over a year ago — it has taken so long to roll out. Developer “demand we didn’t anticipate” caused Apple to “completely re-architect the server infrastructure for push notification,” he said.
Developer representatives from a half dozen companies were trotted out for a dog and pony show to demonstrate how amazing push notification is going to be in the next version of iPhone software, and yet, despite distributing documentation of how the service is intended to work, Apple has yet to provide developers a method for implementing and testing push notification in their apps.
Forstall spoke plainly in his presentation Tuesday (see 26:45 into the video) “It is now really scalable, and we’re ready to go.”
Apparently not.
Calls to Apple for explanation were not returned as of press time, but we’ll be sure to keep readers apprised as this story develops.
