[chrisutley]

I was thinking the iPhone could quench my thirst for Blackberry style Push email, but it occurs to me that I don't think I'll be able to read and reply from multiple email accounts on the iPhone. Push email doesn't seem particularly interesting to me if it has to be a .Mac or Me.com account.

I've considered forwarding my other accounts to Me.com, but then those accounts are not updated when I read/delete messages and what's worse my replies would always come from Me.com regardless of what account the message originated on. Any ideas on how to work around these drawbacks?

[badtz]

I would love for apple to allow one of two things regarding emails:

(1) allow us to forward our own MX records to mobile me (unlikely)

OR

(2) allow IMAP-IDLE on the iPhone (more likely)

I would totally pay for the mobile me services if I were able to use my own domain name

[zerostar]

Not sure what you mean, I have a MobileMe account (for years now) and an exchange server at work, both seem to use PUSH just fine? As long as you have an exchange account that allows it, you can get PUSH email, contacts, calendar, etc. You don't NEED mobileme, but it is very slick.

Originally Posted by chrisutley 

I was thinking the iPhone could quench my thirst for Blackberry style Push email, but it occurs to me that I don't think I'll be able to read and reply from multiple email accounts on the iPhone. Push email doesn't seem particularly interesting to me if it has to be a .Mac or Me.com account.

I've considered forwarding my other accounts to Me.com, but then those accounts are not updated when I read/delete messages and what's worse my replies would always come from Me.com regardless of what account the message originated on. Any ideas on how to work around these drawbacks?

[moep]

Originally Posted by badtz 

I would love for apple to allow one of two things regarding emails:
(2) allow IMAP-IDLE on the iPhone (more likely)

Wouldn't IMAP-IDLE be absolutely devastating for battery-life?

I used to have my auto-check interval for the 4 email accounts set to 15 minutes, recently changed it to 1 hour and this change caused a noticeable increase in battery life for me.

That's with the first-gen iPhone. I recon the effect would be even more significant with 3G activated.
And what I'm talking about here is just one check every 15 minutes, not a permanent connection like IMAP-IDLE would require it.

[vmarks]

I have yahoo push and me.com push. I should add gmail as IMAP and see if it will push that also.

[asd]

You can use mobile me for push if u have another email account. I have an earthlink POP account.
I autoforward the email from eathlink to the me.com email. This is easy to set up. Now all emals to earthlink are forwarded to me.com which pushes them to my iphone. It is slick and only takes seconds to execute. I setup earthlink to automatically delete the email from its serve after it forwards it so they don't pile up.

Now, you only have to delete and read from your me.com account. I think u can setup your iphone so that email appears to come from another address, but im not sure about that.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by moep 

Wouldn't IMAP-IDLE be absolutely devastating for battery-life?

I used to have my auto-check interval for the 4 email accounts set to 15 minutes, recently changed it to 1 hour and this change caused a noticeable increase in battery life for me.

That's with the first-gen iPhone. I recon the effect would be even more significant with 3G activated.
And what I'm talking about here is just one check every 15 minutes, not a permanent connection like IMAP-IDLE would require it.

Who is to say that the MobileMe Push implementation doesn't also consume more battery life? One way or another, something has to be constantly listening, and I'm presuming the phone cannot sleep.

All of this rerouting mail so that you can have Push support is silly to me. What is the purpose? To get your mail as quickly as humanly possible? Well, there are definitely no guarantees that this will work 100% of the time - there are many points of failure with and without the extra forwarding. For greater convenience? Well, personally, I don't think I would find it convenient being notified of getting new messages while I'm in the middle of something else in the first place (not to mention, likely draining my battery faster). I guess to each his own with regards to the convenience factor, but my point is that it is unwise to think of your phone as a pager, there is no way that it will approach that level of reliability. If you need to be contacted instantly, get people using IM or SMS, or get a pager.

[mduell]

The right way is for Apple's cloud/PNS servers to connect to your mail server via IMAP with IDLE support... RIM does this, for real push from IMAP mail servers (like Gmail) to BlackBerries.

I like push email because it lets you have text conversations (can't always or don't always want to make a call) with others who have devices (phones or computers) on different platforms (can't use BB Messenger with Treo/iPhone users) with better reliability/features/message length than SMS.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The right way is for Apple's cloud/PNS servers to connect to your mail server via IMAP with IDLE support... RIM does this, for real push from IMAP mail servers (like Gmail) to BlackBerries.

I like push email because it lets you have text conversations (can't always or don't always want to make a call) with others who have devices (phones or computers) on different platforms (can't use BB Messenger with Treo/iPhone users) with better reliability/features/message length than SMS.

Yeah, I like this model too, but how does the iPhone stay in communication with your mail server? I can't see a model that doesn't involve keeping an open connection. This is fine, probably doesn't consume a whole lot of battery in and of itself, but do iPhones go to sleep like workstations do to consume power? I ask this earnestly without knowing for certain either way...

One would think that they can't since they need to receive incoming calls, but I was thinking that there would be some way for an incoming call to "wake" the phone? Would it be possible for an incoming message to do the same thing? Or, are all phones on constantly and they simply put the display to sleep?

[vmarks]

The radio to the cell tower is always on, and the notifications for call, voicemail, sms all go over the control channel (acknowledging that you're within a certain cell tower's coverage).

[moep]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Who is to say that the MobileMe Push implementation doesn't also consume more battery life? One way or another, something has to be constantly listening, and I'm presuming the phone cannot sleep.

I don't know how Apple's new implementation works, but Yahoo push-mail — or rather triggered pull mail — for the iPhone is quite efficient system for example.

An email arrives on yahoo's servers, yahoo sends a hidden SMS or similar true push message to the iPhone with a pull-request, iPhone connects to fetch the email, done.

IMAP-IDLE is still polling, and polling isn't even close to pushing. And it requires an active or "always-on" network-connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G) of some sorts to work at all.

[BRussell]

I saw this today.

You can set up MobileMe to use any email address as a 'push' email on the iPhone. The first thing you need to do is set your non-MobileMe (.Mac) email address for auto-forward to your MobileMe (.Mac) account.

When you create the email account, make sure you set it up as Other (not as a .Mac or MobileMe account.) Then select IMAP as the type of account. Enter the name and auto-forwarded email address. (This is the email address that will show as the "From" email, even though you're using your MobileMe account.)

For your mail server settings, use your MobileMe settings:
Incoming settings:
Host Name: mail.mac.com
User Name: MobileMe user name
Password: MobileMe password
Outgoing Settings:
Host Name: smtp.mac.com
User Name: MobileMe user name
Password: MobileMe password
Advanced:
Use SSL - On
Authentication - Password
Server Port - 587
Now you're able to receive 'push' email from your non-MobileMe account, and reply without using the @me.com address. (You can use those same settings in the Mail App as well.)

[badtz]

ideally, you can do that w/o having an intermediate mail server. that's the only thing holding me back from switching off a shared host.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I saw this today.

See my "email is not a real-time..." thread - this is yet another possible point of failure. I would not suggest counting on this.

[taldrich]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I saw this today.

Neat solution, but I assume this only works with one alternative email address?

[taldrich]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I saw this today.

OK have tried this and it works - BUT - I needed to still use the outgoing mail server of my own email account, as .Mac and .Me won't allow the relaying of third party email addresses. Works a treat otherwise, and has the added benefit that .Mac allows 1.2GB mail storage, which is much more than my existing mail provider.

[fl3tch3r]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I saw this today.

Push email is a great function of the iphone 3g and I'm currently using the free trial of me.com. I'm wondering though, if you use the above settings will it still push your calendar and contacts. In, my opinion, the push calendar and contacts are a way more useful feature than the mail.

At the end of the day though, is any of it worth $100 a year? I mean, you can set your phone to poll for mail every 5 minutes and you have to sync your phone with your computer all the time to transfer media from itunes anyway so you will still keep your contacts and calendar up to date. Not to mention you can charge your phone via USB connection rather than plug it into the wall.

I also need to reply to emails from my domain which is why I turned up on this forum. It's just not professional to to reply to clients from a me.com account.

Edited: As soon as I finished writing this I realized you can set up aliases in me.com account for outgoing mail. That's good enough for me to pay the $99 price tag. W00T W00T... well done Mr. Jobs.

[Cold Warrior]

I have an iPod Touch with the latest software (same as iPhone 3G) and Gmail IMAP does not push (or, I should say, mobile Mail doesn't do IMAP IDLE). In a long-ago thread, I'd said it does, but I was wrong and wholly repent.