Apple iPhone 2.0: The real story behind MobileMe Push Mail and Jabber/XMPP Chat

So those of you who anticipated a Jabber/XMPP chat client on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) after TUAW rumoured that 'a new XMPP framework has been spotten(sic) in the latest iPhone firmware' back in April were close... but no cigar. Same applies for those who hypothesised about P-IMAP or IMAP IDLE being used by MobileMe for push mail.

The real story, as it turns out, is that Jabber (the same open protocol behind many instant messaging networks including Google Talk) is actually being used for delivering push mail notifications to the iPhone. That's right, you heard it here first. This would explain not only why the libraries were curiously private (in that they are not exposed to developers) but also why IMAP IDLE support only works while Mail.app is open (it's a shame because Google Apps/Gmail supports IMAP IDLE already).

While it's in line with Apple's arguments about background tasks hurting user experience (eg performance and battery life), cluey developers have noted that the OS X (Unix) based iPhone has many options to safely enable this functionality (eg via resource limiting) and that the push notification service for developers is only a partial solution. It's no wonder though with the exclusive carrier deals which are built on cellular voice calls and SMS traffic, both of which could be eroded away entirely if products like Skype and Google Talk were given free reign (presumably this is also why Apple literally hangs onto the keys for the platform). If you want more freedom you're going to have to wait for Google Android, or for ultimate flexibility one of the various Linux based offerings. We digress...

So without further ado, here's the moment we've all been waiting for: a MobileMe push mail notification (using XMPP's pubsub protocol) from aosnotify.mac.com:5223 over SSL:



<message from="pubsub.aosnotify.mac.com" to="samnsofi@aosnotify.mac.com/5e60ad2e47da9fca36de59244f25c9b1cd8e0cb8" id="/protected/com/apple/mobileme/samnsofi/mail/Inbox__samnsofi@aosnotify.mac.com__3gK4m">
<event xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#event">
<items node="/protected/com/apple/mobileme/samnsofi/mail/Inbox">
<item id="5WE7I82L5bdNGm2">
<plistfrag xmlns="plist-apple">
<key>maild</key>
<string>E1B537</string>
</plistfrag>
</item>
</items>
</event>
<x xmlns="jabber:x:delay" stamp="2008-07-18T01:11:11.447Z"/>
</message>

<message from="pubsub.aosnotify.mac.com" to="samnsofi@aosnotify.mac.com/5e60ad2e47da9fca36de59244f25c9b1cd8e0cb8" id="/protected/com/apple/mobileme/samnsofi/mail/Inbox__samnsofi@aosnotify.mac.com__NterM">
<event xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#event">
<items node="/protected/com/apple/mobileme/samnsofi/mail/Inbox">
<item id="8ATABX9e6satO6Y">
<plistfrag xmlns="plist-apple">
<key>maild</key>
<string>544FE17</string>
</plistfrag>
</item>
</items>
</event>
<headers xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/shim">
<header name="pubsub#subid">3DEpJ055dXgB2gLRTQYvW4qGh91E36y2n9e27G3X</header>
</headers>
</message>

I'll explain more about the setup I used to get my hands on this in another post later on. So what's the bet that this same mechanism will be used for the push notification service to be released later in the year?