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FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

blog.fastmail.com

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Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#21

Post by x0x0 »

Osmium wrote: post #15

Yay! I am so happy to hear this. Congratulations and thank you to the Fastmail team and people at Apple who made this happen. This has been my only gripe as a Fastmail customer and the only reason I haven't been using Fastmail as my main email account yet. Very cool :)

fyi: if you're a gmail user, you're likely to be disappointed with fastmail unless you are -- as I am -- using it specifically to avoid using a google product. I wish their web UI were as good as gmail's but it really isn't.

I still agree with these notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9664594

I also think -- and I've tried almost all of them except outlook -- that it's the best non-gmail webmail available today. But that's a big caveat since gmail is free except for your privacy.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#22

Post by vbezhenar »

kuschku wrote: post #17
vbezhenar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's absolutely no way to enable that on custom little VPS? You have to make an agreement with Apple for that?

Well, wireshark + decompilation of existing software. What I imagine, though, is a system similar to GCM, which would be not very helpful.

I guess that this is achieved using a server-side communication: the Fastmail server send the notification to the Apple servers and the Apple server sends the notification to the user's device. So wireshark probably won't help.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#23

Post by gioele »

Osmium wrote: post #15

Yay! I am so happy to hear this. Congratulations and thank you to the Fastmail team and people at Apple who made this happen. This has been my only gripe as a Fastmail customer and the only reason I haven't been using Fastmail as my main email account yet. Very cool :)

> Congratulations and thank you to the Fastmail team and people at Apple who made this happen.

No, sincerely no, no congratulations.

My congratulations will go to those who fight to have that new kind of notifications standardised in a RFC or to those that will reverse engineer the protocol. I am sorry, but my congratulations cannot go to those who are willing to accept _and are proud_ of being part of a closed network. This is another step in screwing even more small business and private people that want to run their own internet services. Do you like these new notifications? Abandon your independence and join our infrastructure, what do you have to lose?

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#24

Post by brongondwana »

x0x0 wrote: post #19
steve19 wrote: post #7

Maybe one day we will get half decent two factor authentication. You can create an alternative login and put 2 factor on that, but not the master login. In theory you should never have to use the master login, and they have written pages of text justifying not having two factor on the master login, but thats not how it works in real life [0] In real life, they require you to submit your master password to get any sup…

Fastmail are also greedy: they monetize 2fa via sms to the tune of $0.12 (!!!) per text, and for the cherry on top, they expire your credits after a year. It's just skeevy cheap. I'm a disappointed subscriber.

I can promise you that we make no money on those SMSes, we just haven't updated the pricing since it really cost that much - and we're actually paying a minimum per-month rate that means it's costing us more than that for how rarely it's used.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#25

Post by kwijibob »

I'm an Android not an iOS user, so maybe I don't get the significance of push notifications.

Isn't this simply the kind of annoying notification that productivity experts tell us to turn off?

I certainly have configured all devices (phone, tablets, pc) to not ding or give notification when new mail arrives.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#26

Post by hedgehog »

vbezhenar wrote: post #14
robn_fastmail wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMAP "push" usually means the IDLE extension, where a client holds a connection open and waits for the server to report that something has happened. This works ok, but isn't great on mobile because holding a TCP connection open is usually difficult on flaky networks and consumes battery. iOS Mail doesn't implement it, instead doing a poll every 15 minutes. However it also implements a separate push system which allow…

So there's absolutely no way to enable that on custom little VPS? You have to make an agreement with Apple for that?

It looks like the interface is called XAPS and someone was able to build a working implementation last year: http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2014-September/097721.ht...

From skimming the notes it looks like it's essentially a way to send APNS notifications to Mail.app and requires a cert from Apple. You could run it from your VPS once you get the cert.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#27

Post by x0x0 »

brongondwana wrote: post #24
x0x0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail are also greedy: they monetize 2fa via sms to the tune of $0.12 (!!!) per text, and for the cherry on top, they expire your credits after a year. It's just skeevy cheap. I'm a disappointed subscriber.

I can promise you that we make no money on those SMSes, we just haven't updated the pricing since it really cost that much - and we're actually paying a minimum per-month rate that means it's costing us more than that for how rarely it's used.

twilio simply doesn't charge that much

plus expiring the credits after a year (or I'd just buy $50 worth so they'd never run out at an inopportune time) is, again, just chintzy

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#28

Post by panic »

kwijibob wrote: post #25

I'm an Android not an iOS user, so maybe I don't get the significance of push notifications. Isn't this simply the kind of annoying notification that productivity experts tell us to turn off? I certainly have configured all devices (phone, tablets, pc) to not ding or give notification when new mail arrives.

In theory this should improve battery life. Instead of waking up the CPU/radios to ask whether there's new mail every few minutes, the phone lets the server push the mail to it.

Re: FastMail gains push notifications in iOS Mail.app, joining only Yahoo and iCloud

#29

Post by cmkrnl »

steve19 wrote: post #7

Maybe one day we will get half decent two factor authentication. You can create an alternative login and put 2 factor on that, but not the master login. In theory you should never have to use the master login, and they have written pages of text justifying not having two factor on the master login, but thats not how it works in real life [0] In real life, they require you to submit your master password to get any sup…

Really a shame that the most important access method that gives full access can't have 2FA.
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