Push Email?

[rcgabriel]

So, being a bit of a practical soul, I let my buddy be the guinea pig and buy the iPhone yesterday and I stuck with my Treo for the time being. We went through the whole activation and setup deal last night and for the most part, things went smooth.

The one mega-problem so far (the potential "deal-breaker" for him) was that we couldn't get push email to work. For reasons that are absolutely beyond me, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to implement standard IMAP IDLE push, like ChatterEmail and similar programs use, and instead has implemented a non-standard (or rather, rejected standard) called P-IMAP, or Push IMAP.

Maybe we are missing something here, but we tried two providers that work with ChatterEmail on Treo and implement IMAP IDLE just fine (Fastmail, Tuffmail), and they both get email to the iPhone, but there is no pushing at all.

To the best of my ability to tell, there are no normal, standard Unix email server programs that support this variant P-IMAP. So while all of us with Treos have been enjoying push email with the email service providers of our choice, iPhone users seem to be stuck with using Yahoo's Push Email service which does implement this P-IMAP service? Strike one for the iPhone - this results in almost a total write-off of this device for me as it is.

Now, problem #2. Assuming you have a Yahoo email account, and are willing to trust Yahoo as your primary mobile email provider, I see no documentation stepping people through the process of pulling email from your main email account and then push it out to your snazzy new iPhone. So I'm assuming I have to set up my primary email service to forward copies of emails (that pass through my spam filters) to Yahoo mail, set up my Yahoo account on my iPhone, and then hopefully it will just work?

This is a total pain in the ***. Anybody have a push email setup working on their iPhone via Yahoo or other?

If I'm missing something here, please tell me. I really, really want to be wrong about this so I can go ahead and get an iPhone for myself.

------------------------

Update: He just emailed me that he got push working with Yahoo mail. Still, the email situation sort of sucks, and the total lack of documentation/information sucks worse. Maybe I just wasn't born to be a Mac fanboy.

 

[cmaier]

that sucks

i'm running hmailserver on windows as my imap server.

hopefully either apple will fix this in a firmware spin, or the server folks will go ahead and implement p-imap (which, unless i'm mistaken, is still not an accepted standard).

 

[ohbw]

My email is pushing just fine

I've had four Treos. I'm a Treo guy, dyed in the wool. But I have to say my @emailtreo account, which I've used with Chattermail on Treos, is pushing perfectly to my iPhone. (Faster than it pushes to my 680, by the way).

 

[cmaier]

ohbw - that's very interesting. I don't have my iphones yet (ordered on-line) so i can't try it. I doubt emailtreo is using p-imap (as opposed to idle) so I wonder what's going on.

 

[MacUser]

But I have to say my @emailtreo account, which I've used with Chattermail on Treos, is pushing perfectly to my iPhone.

Can you elaborate on that, please?

 

[zrs70]

Easy solution

Ok, I say easy, though it is a bit convoluted....

I currently have a treo with chatteremail. Here's what I do to get push e-mail:

1) I am assigned an sbc account at work
2) I make the sbc automatically forward to gmail
3) I have in the gmail setting to forward my mail to my aol account WHILE AT THE SAME TIME RETAINING THE MAIL IN THE INBOX. (gmail is one of the only systems that will both hold and forward)
4) When I send mail (either from my treo or from my desktop), I have the settings look like I am sending from sbc.

Now, I can do the same thing with the iphone. That is, forward the gmail to a new yahoo! mail account.

 

[rcgabriel]

I've had four Treos. I'm a Treo guy, dyed in the wool. But I have to say my @emailtreo account, which I've used with Chattermail on Treos, is pushing perfectly to my iPhone. (Faster than it pushes to my 680, by the way).

.... that is very bizarre. Why has nobody else stepped up to report something similar? I was pretty much dead certain that standard IMAP IDLE just didn't work after what we observed, and after reading a bunch of similar forum postings elsewhere.

Anybody have any ideas on this? I'll experiment more, but I don't want to waste my time unless there's actually a chance it might work.

 

[mshaw1515]

Ok, I say easy, though it is a bit convoluted....

I currently have a treo with chatteremail. Here's what I do to get push e-mail:

1) I am assigned an sbc account at work
2) I make the sbc automatically forward to gmail
3) I have in the gmail setting to forward my mail to my aol account WHILE AT THE SAME TIME RETAINING THE MAIL IN THE INBOX. (gmail is one of the only systems that will both hold and forward)
4) When I send mail (either from my treo or from my desktop), I have the settings look like I am sending from sbc.

Now, I can do the same thing with the iphone. That is, forward the gmail to a new yahoo! mail account.

Why not have the SBC forward directly to Yahoo?

 

[zrs70]

Why not have the SBC forward directly to Yahoo?

Unless things have changes, SBC cannot both retain and forward e-mail. Gmail can. And I need to keep things on the pop server.

 

[ohbw]

Can you elaborate on that, please?

I'm not tech savvy enough to speak the various acronym-dialects of push email. I just know that the instant I synced my iPhone to my computer, it transferred all my mail accounts, and the @emailtreo account is pushing instantly and reliably to my iPhone.

The company behind emailtreo is

http://www.everyone.net/

Maybe someone with more chops than me can say why this is working. But it is, I promise!

 

[mshaw1515]

I'm not tech savvy enough to speak the various acronym-dialects of push email. I just know that the instant I synced my iPhone to my computer, it transferred all my mail accounts, and the @emailtreo account is pushing instantly and reliably to my iPhone.

The company behind emailtreo is

http://www.everyone.net/

Maybe someone with more chops than me can say why this is working. But it is, I promise!

What about contacts and calendar - are those syncing for you as well? I assume you're using exchange?

 

[ohbw]

What about contacts and calendar - are those syncing for you as well? I assume you're using exchange?

Er, I hestitate to say it, forgive me, but I don't use any MS software. I know the (predatory, unethical, competition-assassinating) history of MS very well. I just don't use their products because I just don't believe in the way they do business / release junk / sabotage the good products of others when used in conjunction with their own. I used their stuff with my nose held until it became practical to do otherwise, which it now is, and now I don't.

I'm syncing with iCal and Address Book.

 

[mshaw1515]

Er, I hestitate to say it, forgive me, but I don't use any MS software. I know the (predatory, unethical, competition-assassinating) history of MS very well. I just don't use their products because I just don't believe in the way they do business / release junk / sabotage the good products of others when used in conjunction with their own. I used their stuff with my nose held until it became practical to do otherwise, which it now is, and now I don't.

I'm syncing with iCal and Address Book.

You're a good Man (or Woman). Are iCal and Address Book sycing over the air? I'm thinking in could set up outlook to sync with them.

PS - if you don't want to help bc im using the devils software i'll understand

 

[ohbw]

I'm syncing via USB -- the iPhone dock is next to my laptop.

Don't understand IM comment -- ?

 

[ohbw]

Oh, I get it, "I'm", not IM. They're not the devil (if there is one). But they're a pretty dirty company. Why fund 'em?

 

[silverado]

.... that is very bizarre. Why has nobody else stepped up to report something similar? I was pretty much dead certain that standard IMAP IDLE just didn't work after what we observed, and after reading a bunch of similar forum postings elsewhere.

Anybody have any ideas on this? I'll experiment more, but I don't want to waste my time unless there's actually a chance it might work.

It doesn't work for me either using fastmail. However, one difference is that ohbw is reporting that it worked by syncing his iPhone. A hope would be that there are internal settings in the iPhone that are not (yet) exposed in the UI and that somehow importing the account turned on those settings. If you want to try it, maybe you could set outlook to read those IMAP accounts then sync and have the iPhone import the accounts rather than create them manually.

 

[cmaier]

I'm not tech savvy enough to speak the various acronym-dialects of push email. I just know that the instant I synced my iPhone to my computer, it transferred all my mail accounts, and the @emailtreo account is pushing instantly and reliably to my iPhone.

The company behind emailtreo is

http://www.everyone.net/

Maybe someone with more chops than me can say why this is working. But it is, I promise!

Hmm. From their website, it appears they use IDLE, not p-imap. Curiouser and curiouser.

 

[rcgabriel]

Hmm. From their website, it appears they use IDLE, not p-imap. Curiouser and curiouser.

Well, to be fair, IDLE is a subset of the P-IMAP spec. There is no technical reason it would be impossible for iPhone to support both standard IDLE and the rest of P-IMAP.

The trick is figuring out how to get iPhone to issue the IDLE commands to the server - it apparently knows to do it with the Yahoo servers, possibly because the Yahoo server announces itself in some way as supporting P-IMAP? I'm not clear on this. Or is it hardcoded into the iPhone in some way?

I have read other forum postings from folks who's said they monitored the IMAP traffic between their IDLE-supporting IMAP servers and their iPhones and didn't see any evidence of iPhone trying to issue IDLE commands to the server.

 

[cmaier]

Let's be clear. There are actually two specifications at work here. P-Imap is actually a draft specification (at the moment, not yet a full standard), that contains extensions specifically tailored to pushing to mobile devices. This standard defines new extensions to the imap protocol that no servers (other than oracle and maybe one by sun?) seem to currently support (at least none that i've been able to find for sale or downloadable). Leopard's server is rumored to include such support.

This is different than "imap push" through the traditional use of IDLE (for example in chatter). (Note: when I say "idle" I mean "use of idle for push." Idle has other uses as well.)

Their website (everyone.net) indicates they use IDLE, not P-imap. And all indications (other than this one thread) seem to be that the iphone does not use IDLE (at least not to do push). Yahoo supports p-imap. (as well as IDLE, i presume?)

I'll try to instrument my IMAP server and see what I can figure out once my iphones arrive.

BTW, here's a link to the P-IMAP RFC: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-maes-lemonade-p-imap-03

Note that the "in-band" version is essentially the "idle" solution (or, more accurately, I am too stupid to see any differences)

 

[techiegirl]

I have an account at everyone.net and I cannot get my "push" mail through the iPhone.