Thoughts on AIM and iPhone Push notification
It’s really fast. Less than a second from sending the message to receiving it on my phone. That’s cool.
That said: AOL, having been in the instant messaging business for 12+ years, still doesn’t have a fucking clue what they’re doing.
Being able to remain online after I close the AIM iPhone app is a great idea, but horribly executed. I, like most humans, sleep every night. I don’t want my phone to buzz any time someone IMs me at 3AM. Granted, that probably wouldn’t happen often, but one time would be enough to piss me off. Why can’t software developers remember that we’re human beings?
Why can I only stay online for up to 24 hours after closing the app? What if I just always want to be “on”, but with varying states? I want my client at work to say “At Work”, my home client to say “At Home”, and the rest of the time I want it to have me as away, but with a submessage of “iPhone!” or something. From a technical standpoint, this is stupidly easy.
Has anyone been able to get their buddy icon to work across multiple clients? I mean, at any point in the last 10 years? I never have. Meebo can propagate an icon to Gtalk, AIM, Jabber, and whatever else I want, no sweat, but my iPhone AIM app doesn’t know what my buddy icon is.
In conclusion, I’m sleepy and I just want an IM client that doesn’t suck. Let me use my iPhone as an IM beeper, but don’t buzz me between 11PM and 7AM - just save those messages silently. Let my screenname status reflect my location and/or client, without having to manually update every time I log in. And for the love of jebus, just make the fucking buddy icons work already. It’s 2009, why haven’t we solved this problem yet?
