The Apple experiement with its software continues. With the release of the final version of the iPhone 2.1 tentatively poised for September, Apple has, quite inexplicably, taken out the Push Notification service from its fourth iPhone 2.1 beta version. This feature, which has been present from 2.1 was being considered as an innovation that was suppossed to make the iPhone a better GPS unit as well as one with potentially better battery life.

Why is the absence of Push Notification such a major issue?

1. The battery issue: The senior VP of iPhone software at Apple, Scott Forstall, has stated that the implementation of bacground apps on most mobile OSs remain open in the background even after it has been closed. This eats up battery life quite rapidly. With the iPhone battery already a major concern, this push service can evolve into a sustainable alternative.

2. Application Malfunctioning: If any section/portion of this push infrastructure fails, the user is likely to land up with an application that does not work as intended, especially those apps that depend on real time flow of data.

So why has it been removed in the first place? Apple has offered little information, so far. Typically, they’ve refused to go beyond stating that the notification code has been pulled away for “further development”.

Note: Though its GPS features are supposed to remain, the “beta 4 removal” contains portions from the OS 2.1’s CoreLocation library:

CLLocation.heading
CLLocation.speed
CLLocation.speedAvailable
CLLocationDirection
CLLocationSpeed

We thought these to be the bacbones behind the directional features of Google Maps and other Apps with similar directional features. What’s your take?