Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push

AppleInsider has posted an in depth look at MobileMe and push messaging which delivers immediate updates to mobile iPhone users over the air.

While the launch of MobileMe didn't go smoothly as planned, the service itself is brilliantly well designed, both usable and attractive (despite some remaining flaws), and demonstrates the real potential of the future of web apps and web services. The pioneering service is also the first consumer-oriented, low-priced push mail, contacts, calendar, and bookmarks solution for any platform. MobileMe is actually a collection of three layers of components: Apple's hosted web apps, its cloud of online services, and its client-side push and sync applications on the iPhone and for the Mac and Windows PC desktop.

The web apps: the online side of MobileMe is composed of five apps (Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, and iDisk) and an admin page, all developed using the SproutCore JavaScript framework. That makes them accessible from any modern, standards-based web browser without the need to download some kind of extra middleware. Apple does warn Internet Explorer 7 users that Microsoft's browser "has known compatibility issues with modern web standards which affect Web 2.0 applications such as MobileMe," and recommends users try Firefox 3 or Safari 3 instead.


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