Mobile Fail Point No 1
I’ve quickly come to realize that the mobile worlds has a huge dependency on synchronization tehnology to make things work smoothly. Toucan read your email on the phone and reply from your laptop. Read rss items should be synced and just about everything else on your phone should be synced with somewhere else.
The problem is that generally synchronization support is lousy. NetNewsWire is too slow syncing feeds, Mail.app doesn’t seem to notice if a message changes from unread to read and the WordPress iPhone app doesn’t seem to download drafts that you created in the browser interface.
Sync is the killer requirement that goes unsaid on mobile devices. You can spend as long as you like polishing he UI but if your synchronization isn’t seamless your app will be a chore to use. If you get it right users won’t notice at all.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:16 am
[...] « Mobile Fail Point No 1 [...]
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
When using a true IMAP server, as I do at home, Mail.app notices unread to read changes without any issue :)
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Mail.app only notices if it hasn’t already downloaded the message. Doesn’t seem to matter which IMAP server you use and I’ve used it with a few.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I use dovecot and I swear when I leave Mail.app open all day at home, anything I mark as read at work or on my phone is marked as read in Mail after it next updates. I’ll have to double check that :)
July 24th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Maybe it just takes more time. I have a habit of reading important emails while still in bed, then getting up, walking down the hallway and reading the others. It doesn’t seem to sync in that time, even if I madly hit the refresh/reload/check mail button thingy.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Yup it definitely works. I sent myself an email, marked it as read on the phone and by the time I’d finished playing with the latest app (Locly is cool) Mail.app had updated.
August 16th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Ah, it works but only when you switch folders to your inbox – if you’re just sitting there looking at your inbox it never updates no matter how much you click the check for new mail button. Switch to another folder and back again and suddenly the mail gets marked as read.
August 17th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Again, I don’t know what server you’re using but I can literally sit here and watch a mail in my inbox marked as read without touching the computer :)
Maybe it’s because I have the auto-check time set really low, I’ve noticed the “get mail” button in mail.app is a little weird for IMAP servers.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
[...] being offline a lot really highlights Mobile Fail Point #1 – synchronization. NetNewsWire has always been rock solid with synchronization even if it did require manually [...]