My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Apple - Part 5

Apple Push Notification Service

Called APNS in short, also supported by OSx Lion.

The server-side component can send the app a push notification! There are three things a push notification can do:

1. Display a short text message
2. Play a brief sound
3. Set a number in a badge on the app’s icon

Main Roleplayers:

1) Iphone or Mac Application

2) APNS server from Apple

3) Your Notification Server.

What does it need?

1) Iphone Device Token

2) App Id

3) Iphone to be registered with APNS, enabled push notification

4) Your Server registered with APNS

What You need for Push Notification?

An iOS Developer Program membership. - You need to make a new App ID and provisioning profile for each app that uses push, as well as an SSL certificate for the server. You do this at the iOS Provisioning Portal.

A push notification is a short message that consists of the device token, a payload, and a few other bits and bytes.

Example:

{

   "aps":

   {

   "alert": "Hello, world!",

   "sound": "default"

   }

}

Official guide for Push Notification from Apple

Each notification has a maximum size of 256 bytes, which makes it very efficient for services with small data allowances (such as mobile phones