Amen Rob! I've been saying this for...well...a long time!

My email at work uses Outlook and an Exchange server. I haven't heard it called "push email" but the emails do appear in Outlook as soon as they get to the server.

When we were still using POP mail, I had my mail client set to get mail every 15 minutes, and if I was expecting an email, I would do a manual check. With my home email (still POP mail), when I want to see what email I've got, I do a manual check. When I'm done with the messages that gets, I do another manual check. Repeat until no new mail, or I'm ready to go do something else.

My email at work uses Outlook and an Exchange server. I haven't heard it called "push email" but the emails do appear in Outlook as soon as they get to the server.

When we were still using POP mail, I had my mail client set to get mail every 15 minutes, and if I was expecting an email, I would do a manual check. With my home email (still POP mail), when I want to see what email I've got, I do a manual check. When I'm done with the messages that gets, I do another manual check. Repeat until no new mail, or I'm ready to go do something else.

The appeal of "push" email for me is that it reduces the amount of time my phone spends broadcasting and receiving. Think about it this way: if I get one email per day, and my software checks every 30 minutes, that means my phone is connecting to the mail server 48 times to receive 1 message. With push mail, it's only one connection.

As much as people bitch and moan about their Crackberry and how they can never get away from work, I think that having push e-mail is another one of those things that makes people feel important, especially in places like DC, NYC and SF. Once in a very great while do I need an e-mail RIGHT NOW, but I can't think of many times in the past year when that has been true. All that I really want/need is some level of connectivity to the office when I am, for example, driving to a client meeting.

What does push do for me? I do not do it for the immediate access (which I do not get anyway, as the server I uses aggregates mail from a couple of addresses every 15 minutes); I do it because I get a few e-mails an hour during the work day, hardly any at night, and rather than waste battery life (a challenge, as I live at the edge of service, so my phone works hard for a signal) and waste time checking at night, I have mail pushed to me, and the push server sends nothing between time that I go to bed and the time that I wake up.

I think in the iPhone context, "push" kind of makes sense. It sounds as if the iPhone is set up so that only one application is "running" at a time. So the "push" enables the iPhone to put some kind of on-screen notification of new mail even when you're not in the mail program.

On a normal computer, the email application is always running and can make a sound or put an indicator in the Windows tray or Mac OS dock. On an iPhone, the mail application can't do this if it isn't running--so "push" is a work-around to give a system-level notification facility that isn't dependent on a given application being currently running.

oh, go fly a kite! push rocks!!

you'd want push email for the same reasons why SMS isn't dead. the author of this article doesn't get it-- he probably doesn't use SMS at all and wonders why people even bother typing sms on their little phone rather than calling the person directly.

Most, if not all the conventional email clients mentioned in this article can be set via user options to poll the server for new messages as frequently as every 60 seconds. Mozilla SeaMonkey can even monitor multiple accounts on multiple mail servers simultaneously, each with its own polling interval. If you need it faster than every 60 seconds, instant messaging is the way to go, and that's not going to be significantly faster. So, who needs "push" e-mail, anyway? Maybe it's folks with a penchant for the ponies, who like to place bets once the race has already started.

At some point, in the not too distant future, someone must say, "Enough! We don't need to be connected every single second that we are breathing!" I, for one, welcome that day.

Thanks, Rob -- you are right on track!

Another downside to so-called "push" email is that the broadband antenna on my phone needs to be on in order to receive mail near-real-time. That sucks the battery dry real quick. When I get my mail only when I'm ready to read it(on-demand), the battery on my Treo 700p can last 3+ days before recharging. With push features enabled, it's less than 24 hours before I have to recharge.

The big advantage of 'push' email for me is when it comes to time sensitive information. In my particular industry (real estate), often times it is the person who responds the quickest to the potential new client that gets the work. When that work can mean $5000 - $50,000 per transaction, you REALLY get to liking the instant nature of push technology.

Push is more energy efficient than frequent polling.

I am sorry Rob, but uncharacteristically I think you missed the real reason for Apple's iPhone, at least, adopting "Push" technology.

Email might be the reason given for Push, and you are correct in denigrating the people who need a life and whose existence hinge on the next email, but the real reason is more like "Mister E." above, who need time sensitive information. Think iChat (IM), stock quotes, ebay bids, traffic updates on Google's map, etc. I am *guessing* that Apple also uses Push to update the position and map on Google Maps, now that the iPhone can accurately locate itself using its GPS receiver. Getting back to Push on email though, by having it in the iPhone, Apple can now claim a better parity with a Blackberry. The major remaining difference being the Blackberry's superior keyboard for easy & rapid typing.

Apple is going to use Push to ensure a person's calendar is synced so that if a meeting is switched or cancelled, people who have subscribed to the group calendar are assured of being notified. This is also the basic mechanism Microsoft's Exchange uses, so by allowing Push, Apple has been able to create a full fledged Exchange Client in its desktops, laptops, and iPhones.

See "10:09 PT" on the live reporting of MacWorld's WWDC coverage:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133798/2008/06/wwdckeynote.html

Apple was under pressure to offer a true multitasking ability on the iPhone, which all the OS X systems have, and the iPhone is built on a subset of Mac OS X, so multitasking seems like an easy choice to offer. However, multitasking is processor, and thus energy, intensive, and would kill battery life. A compromise design is Apple's use of Push to allow those applications that need to change their "State" (e.g., update), to do so in a very efficient manner.

See "11:00 PT" to "11:05 PT", ibid:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133798/2008/06/wwdckeynote.html

Bruce

Because sometimes you just want something to be there. Your columns are getting more and more irrelevant. I have to stop reading this now.

On this occasion, Rob has it wrong, and other people have alluded to it in different ways.

The key reason for push e-mail, beyond the normal desire to receive something with less delay, is the massive increase in battery life.

When a PDA makes a connection to check for e-mail, this is a battery-intensive process. If it's done frequently, the battery drains quickly.

With push e-mail, the PDA is alerted by the server to pucker up and get ready for an e-mail only when a new e-mail comes in. Sent over HTTP typically, this is cheaper in battery life.

Note that for completeness, it's worth mentioning that push e-mail can usually be configured to only be recevied during certain hours (for example, I have my PDA set to not receive e-mails automatically between 9pm and 7am -- who wants to wake up in the night to see that Circuit City has some new deals on TVs? If it's an urgent issue at night, e-mail is not the solution anyway).

The battery life arguments are all crap. I can't believe that if you are only getting a few emails a day that you really need to have them on your device as soon as you look at it. So for the high volume email recipient, the push technology is definitely going to require more broadcast time (every message generates a connection.) Besides if battery life is your main concern then just turn the polling off on your email client and only retrieve when you click the Send/Receive button. But then you'll have to wait for a few seconds for your email to download and the world will probably end before you were notified.

Sorry, y'all, Rob's right on target this time.

THANK GOD that I am not that important that it is NECESSARY for me to see e-mails instantly. If its that urgent, try using a cell phone. Life is already insane enough without every minute of the day being 'controlled' by others, who of course will expect an instant response.

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ON ANOTHER NOTE, anybody care to comment on the product known as Super-antispyware -- either the free or professional edition.

"Outlook idles for a full 30 minutes before looking for new mail."

With old Outlook 2002/XP, there is a "Schedule an automatic send/receive every XX minutes" function, so you can have it check for mail as often as you want.

I used web-based email for everything...works perfectly fine and I can check it from any computer in the world. I just refresh either on my PocketPC or a desktop....and voila! No real need for pushing it to me.

Who "needs" push email? No one, really. But lots of people either THINK they need it, or just want it badly enough to convince themselves they need it.
If it's that important to you, buy a device that supports it. If not, you don't have to. Simple, no?

Another benefit of push mail on the iPhone for me would be that my speakers would only make that whining noise when mail actually comes in than every 15 minutes when my iphone is polling.

I am looking forward to push calendaring more than push email. My employer doesn't allow access to web mail from inside of the firewall. We can get to calendaring and contacts so if I can use either gmail or yahoo mail to get to mobileme, I will be in pig heaven.

Like all the other people who have more knowledge, I also agree that "push" isn't desired for the fact that messages are received immediately.

The iPhone currently does 15 minutes as the fastest fetch time interval.

That means the iPhone pings the server 96 times in one day.

And if you only get one message on that day?

Huge amount of battery wasted.

Interesting. Why is it that folks are so critical of others' perceived "need" to be connected 24/7? It's as judgmental as it is useless and petty.

I agree that push is very, very useful. I don't get many messages a day, and push allows me to look only when a message arrives. Otherwise, I end up doing a manual check several times a day, wasting time and battery life. If anything, push allows people to be LESS dependent on their PDAs, since they're not doing arbitrary checks as often. And lots of things/circumstances just don't warrant a phone call -- and I was surprised to hear Rob write this kind of article. PLENTY of people need AND want this kind of technology, from the less busy to the very busy. It makes sense.