Anand Reviews the Apple iPhone 3G

The AIM Application

This is the one application that honestly just bothers me. It could have been so incredibly good, and completely negated the need for text messages - but, it doesn’t - largely thanks to the current iPhone OS not supporting a key feature which will be enabled later this year.

The first iPhone completely redefined texting for me. I had used SMS in the past but I just never really got into it, I was far more of an IM-addict than a text addict. And it was the first sign that perhaps I was actually getting old, since all of my friends who are in highschool or college now do nothing but text each other, and many of them actually hate instant messaging.

The iPhone changed all of that however - I quickly burned through the 200 text messages that came with the first iPhone’s service plan and needed to upgrade to the 1500 package almost immediately. As I wrote last year, the iPhone’s SMS application was quite possibly the most intuitive SMS interface I’d ever seen, and it was beyond easy to actually have a conversation with someone over SMS.

There’s nothing tremendously unique about the iPhone’s SMS app, it looks and works a lot like iChat on OS X. What I really wanted, was iChat on the iPhone, I wanted an IM client that worked the way the SMS app did, but didn’t force me to pay per message. With the iPhone 3G and the 2.0 firmware Apple still hasn’t delivered its own iChat app for the platform, but AOL has.

The problem is that Apple doesn’t allow applications to remain active in memory once you’ve navigated away from them, it’s a key distinction that is designed to keep the iPhone’s interface running as quickly as possible. With an IM client however, you need it to be running in the background so you can be notified of new IMs even when your phone is locked and in your pocket, just like a SMS.

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Apple developed a framework to allow for applications to push notifications to the iPhone without requiring the app remains active and in the foreground. The process works like this: when an application establishes a connection to its server over the cellular or WiFi network (e.g. AIM client on the iPhone connects to an AIM server), there’s a persistent notification connection established between an Apple server and the phone as well. Regardless of whether on the cellular or a WiFi network, your phone will have an IP address that Apple/AT&T are aware of - Apple will simply keep an active connection to your IP, even after you’ve closed the application. Then when the application server (e.g. AIM server) wants to send data back to your phone, it simply goes through Apple’s push server and the data is then pushed to your phone much like a SMS. In the case of an IM client, you can get notifications that messages are available, you can get previews of the actual messages and you can get sound notifications like you would when receiving a SMS.

Unfortunately, this persistent push connection to your iPhone isn’t enabled in the public 2.0 firmware and won’t be available until September. Yet AOL’s AIM client is available, in beta form, today. Herein lies the problem - without support for push notifications, the AIM client is mostly useless as a constant communication device - you can only receive IMs if your phone is unlocked and you’re actually in the AIM app. Obviously, come September, that limitation should get solved but then there are other concerns.

Despite the popularity of AOL’s Instant Messenger, AOL has never done a great job of making a good IM client. Pidgin, Trillian, Adium and even iChat are infinitely better, and the same holds true for AOL’s iPhone client. It’s fairly simple but honestly, AOL just needed to copy Apple’s SMS interface but instead it made the iPhone AIM client feel more like a crappy 3rd party application, than something that belongs on the phone.

Switching between conversations is pretty easy, you just swipe left-right/right-left to flip through all active conversations. The problem is that whenever you start a new conversation with someone, it adds the conversation to the stack.

Woops, I accidentally clicked on this person - there's no easy way to close this conversation, I have to go back to the main menu, select active IMs and then delete it.

For example, let’s say I want to send my friend Manny an IM. I’d select his name from my buddy list and it’d bring up a chat window, simple enough right? Now let’s say I want to go and IM Gary; I go back to my buddy list, select Gary’s name and another IM window is added “behind” Manny’s window. If I am done talking to Manny, there’s no good way of closing his IM window. I have to select Active IMs from the bottom of my screen, hit edit, then delete our conversation, which as you’d expect, also deletes our conversation.

The AIM iPhone client also uses standard IM sounds, which can be pretty annoying. Obviously putting your iPhone into silent mode will get rid of the sounds but it’d be nice to be able to customize the AIM sounds.

The AIM client is obviously in beta, but I honestly can’t help but think that the best option would be for Apple to develop its own iChat client for the iPhone. The Apple-made apps continue to be the best made software for the iPhone, by a large degree, and I suspect that this will continue for quite a while as iPhone app development is in its infancy.

The biggest issue is the lack of background notifications, which makes the AIM app pretty much useless as I don’t keep my phone unlocked and running AIM all the time. We’ll have to see what happens come September, but as it stands this is one major feature that I wanted last June that Apple still hasn’t delivered.