Exchange server and iPhone and Push

dsosbdsosb
Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
I don't really understand push technology. Could someone help me? Do I have to have or be on an exchange server in order to use the iPhone for email? I am interested in purchasing a 3G iPhone but only use webmail presently. I would like to keep my calendar and email synced and do have a dotMac account so I think that will work. I just don't understand how Push works and am wondering if I will even be able to use it without being on an exchange server.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    thttht Posts: 5,450member
    If you buy mobileme ($99 per annum), you'll get push email, push contacts, and push calendar (plus iDisk, pictures, web, etc if you're on a Mac). This means that if you make a calendar appt on your iPhone, it will automatically update (push) the calendar appt to mobileme, and mobileme will push (update) the appt to your local computer's calendaring program. Or vice versa. Same thing with email. If you're out and about with your email, and someone sends your mobileme email account, it'll push the email directly to your iPhone as fast as the signal can travel through all of the wires, the air, and the electronics (a minute or less).



    You'll need to have an email service, software and device capable of push. Mobileme is one such email service. MS Exchange Activesync is another. Blackberry is another (lives on top of Exchange). Lotus notes (IBM) is another. There's another service called Goodlink. The iPhone has support for MS Exchange and obviously Mobileme.



    If you buy Mobileme, you'll have to tell all of your contacts to use your mobileme email to get the push goodness.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    areseearesee Posts: 776member
    Your .Mac account will automatically change over to MobileMe when it goes live. And your .Mac address will remain active. Though it will be a part of your MobileMe account.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    bbwibbwi Posts: 812member
    The first reply is good but to further clarify, no, you do not have to have or be on an Exchange server to use the iPhone. iPhone will work with any web based email.



    Push technology just offers the benefits described by the first reply. All of your emails, contacts, calendar items will be synchronized without the need to plug your iPhone into your computer. If you delete an email on your iPhone it's automatically deleted on your Mac.



    The real benefit of push technology versus pull technology is that push is much better on your battery. Lets say you have a Gmail account. In order to get email from Gmail you can use POP to pull messages into your iPhone from the Gmail servers (Gmail now offers IMAP which is a little different I'll stick with POP for this discussion). This means that your iPhone wakes up every few minutes, goes out to the Gmail servers and says "Any new mail?". It does this 24 hours a day 7 days week. Do you receive mail every 5 minutes? Not many people do, especially on their personal email. But your iPhone has to wake from sleep every 5 minutes just so the Gmail servers can say "Nope, no mail for you". With push technology (such as MobileMe), your iPhone never has to wake up because your iPhone simply stays asleep until the server says "Hey iPhone, I got mail here I'm gonna send to you".



    MobileMe is the best option right now if you want push email on your iPhone. However, I fully believe that Gmail will soon offer push email. It's the next logical step for Gmail to compete with the iPhone and feature enhance their Android platform. But that's just my two cents.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    aegisdesignaegisdesign Posts: 2,914member
    I'd also add that Yahoo Mail is also push capable on the iPhone and in theory any IMAP mail server that supports IMAP IDLE supports push email as that's the same mechanism that both Yahoo and MobileMe uses for push email.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    dsosbdsosb Posts: 52member
    Thanks to all of you who answered. This has been very helpful! I think I finally understand!
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