Davak IMed me this morning that some gmail accounts had the luxurious IMAP protocol enabled. I’ve had a hate/hate relationship with POP for… ever. Before replying to him, I clicked the settings link at top and saw “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” instead of the normal “Forwarding and POP” tab up top. This will be particularly great for iPhone access where messages sent through gmail appear as new emails not long after. Don’t fret if you account is not currently enabled. No one else I know has theirs enabled yet. IMAP can be a server-intensive protocol in some ways, so it is prudent of Google to roll it out slowly.
In case I’m not the last to know about it, give http://gridgets.com a load on your iPhone or Touch iPod. It will load a few icons that resemble the home page of your device:
The content of this page is easily customizable by clicking the lower right edit icon and then the add icon that appears. Two lists are scrollable, a favorites and everything, and there is a capability to add your own custom “gridget” directly from your iPhone. There are quite a few iPhone apps there, several I’d not yet seen.
Off the iPhone, developers can submit their iPhone-worthy app to gridgets.com for inclusion in the list. I actually found this sweet application while on Cultured Code’s website looking (and drooling) over their impending Things application for OS X. I’m eager to try Things out and will likely blog about that when it drops. As my list of things to do grows, my ability to manage them diminishes, but I’ve yet to find a really awesome to-do manager. Things has a beautiful, simplistic look and I hope it also has an elegant operation, as well.
I got a kick out of something that Apple sent me. My iPhone has intermittently been acting up (not making sounds when it ought to — when typing or, less importantly, talking to someone). I’ve worked both ends of so many hardware support cases that I’m fine with that, stuff happens. The mark of a good company is how easy their tech support is to navigate, how quickly you get results out of their tech support, and the magnitude of those results. So far, Apple rocks.
Quick phone response, intelligent questions, and I had a replacement service loaner iPhone this morning, the next day. The very best part came when I opened the box and surveyed the contents.
Before I opened the box, I thought about looking for something to open the SIM card holder with. Then I thought, meh, I bet they have some tool in there for that. Indeed they did and it’s now my favorite support tool included by any company with any product:
Sure, they could have developed some elaborate tool to fit this purpose. But I applaud them for the simplicity of this solution. It’s the tool I would have rummaged for in my desk drawer for 10 minutes, so it’s really great that they included one. I like the packaging, too, the little plastic bag with the worth-a-thousand-words directions.
The recovery of my original iPhone’s contents onto the new one was remarkably complete. I was impressed by this — even the log of my phone calls made it back.
Of course, I’d rather have had no problems with my beloved iPhone, but it may have been worth it for the chuckle I got when I saw the paper clip in the bag.
Newcomer to the growing list of supported iPhone instant messaging clients, FlickIM is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch if you are an AIM user. To try it out, hit http://flickim.com on your iPhone. The experience is very iPhone-like. What impresses me most is its ability to retain and reconnect to the service after longish periods away from Safari. This has not been a feature of most other iPhone IM clients that I’ve tried.
FlickIM also supports sending YouTube or movie trailer videos via IM. References to the videos are sent so that another iPhone user running FlickIM will see the video play immediately, otherwise a clickable link will be sent to users of other clients.
Orange talk bubbles pop up to indicate other chat sessions and allow quick movement among them — a very nice feature.
All in all, FlickIM represents an as-near-to-fully-functional iPhone IM application as we can expect from a webapp. The biggest thing lacking from IM clients using a browser approach is full-iPhone integration. When my iPhone is locked, it’s smudgy screen black, I would love for it to make a little sound and vibration and pop up a little growl-like notification of the new IM that’s arrived much like SMS messages do. I’m reserving a little tear for the day this happens.
One of the loudest complaints about the iPhone is the absence of built-in instant messaging capabilities. This may change in the future, but the public approach of web-based applications filling the 3rd party application void raises the question: will my favorite web-based instant messaging application work with the iPhone?
The short answer as of June 28th is, “we don’t know!” In fact, perusing blog posts of web-based IM services suggests that none of them have had their hands on an iPhone to test them yet and will have to wait for iDay to find out. Some services we know now won’t work, notably Yahoo! Messenger for the Web which uses Flash and mabber which uses Java. Other services are known to work in Safari. Will they play on an iPhone? We’ll find out. I’ll keep the chart below updated as each service is tested.
General tips: Most web-based instant messaging applications launch pop-up windows as part of their normal function. The iPhone browser has pop-ups blocked by default. To enable pop-ups (not a big deal since it will still ask you to confirm each new popup before opening), follow these taps: Home screen -> Settings -> Safari and tap or slide the switch next to Block Pop-ups. Also, there are security issues with using online instant messaging clients since you are giving them your login and password that likely access systems other than instant messaging.
iPhone Chat is written specifically for the iPhone and, while it is the prettiest and most iPhone-friendly AIM interface at the moment, it does have some issues. There is a 10 minute limit on sessions (which I understand because I know that it’s a mean server load). More limiting is the interface when chat sessions fill the screen. Although there is a scrollbar in that pane when using non-iPhone Safari, the scrollbar is missing on the iPhone making it difficult to use. The application is beautiful with a clever means of switching between chat sessions (small colored squares for each, although the user’s icon would be an improvement) and easy access to the buddy list. If the message pane scrolling issue is resolved, it will be the best of the bunch.
Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, while touting “from any browser. anywhere.â€? uses Flash which the iPhone doesn’t.
Google Talk as a potential web-based client is out of the list. Once signed in, Flash is required.
eBuddy’s mobile site does work with the iPhone, although using it is rather difficult since each page reload rescales the page to it’s wee-est and requires a rescaling each time to be able to see it. Chances are they can easily address this to make it more iPhone friendly and I’ll update this information when they do. eBuddy’s main service does not yet support Safari, so it is out.
I had played with Meebo quite a bit on Saturday and I was able to login once, but the experience was torture. Oh, and not being able to send messages was a bit of a drag. I’m putting it into the Not Supported category although as the Joshmeister pointed out, they have expressed interest in making it work with the iPhone. I think this will be great and when they get it working, I believe it will be a strong combination. UPDATED: 7/3/07: Thanks for the heads up in the comments, Meebo has improved their support for the iPhone and I just tested it out. It works quite well, actually, although don’t try it in landscape mode.
Kool IM is also in the Not Supported list since even login appears to be impossible. Has anyone else been able to get data into their forms?
AIM Express is also confirmed not to work. I was able to login and I was able to see the top of my contacts list, but I was unable to scroll through them. When attempting to IM a contact that was visible, I got a Javascript error. Brian McNitt also saw a Javascript error as mentioned in his comment below.
Snimmer allowed me to login, but I was unable to see my contacts or send messages.
RadiusIM also allowed the login, but didn’t allow messaging through the iPhone. The layout of the page would not work well on the iPhone even if it worked.
ILoveIM is the first IM web client that I would say works pretty well on the iPhone. The size of the window it opens requires a little scrolling up and down, although once a conversation gets going, the active content will be down near the text entry field. Receiving messages through the interface is fast. While ILoveIM worked for AIM, I had problems with it using Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. I was able to login and see my contacts, but my clicks on them had no effect as they did with AIM. Since there is no right-click functionality in the iPhone Safari, this may limit the capabilities of ILoveIM on the iPhone.
MSN Web Messenger was an easy one to exclude as non-functional from the message on the landing page: Your web browser is not supported by this version of MSN Web Messenger. Probably no urgency in changing that, either.
Easy messenger worked as I recall when I put it on the list last week before the iPhone release date, but when I try to connect now it gives a timeout. I’ll leave it on the list for a while and keep checking on it.
IMUnitive provides a pretty blue screen but nothing else.
Updated 7/2/07: Thanks for all the comments. If anyone knows of other web-based instant messaging services or has noticed different results with one of the messaging services listed above, please leave a comment!
Updated 7/9/07: Just added iPhone.BeeJive.com, the new iPhone-compatible Jive Talk application. It’s more like what a native iPhone chat client should be than anything else on the list. It’s in an alpha stage at this point, so connections are intermittenly odd, but when it works, it works beautifully. It’s proudly sitting at the top of this list for now.
Updated 7/18/07: Added FlickIM ( http://flickim.com ) which is a great iPhone AIM client. It fits the iPhone user experience and also supports sending youtube video or movie trailers to other iPhone users. The interface is simple and quite resilient, more so than other services I’ve tried. If you use AIM, give FlickIM a try.
– Untested