» Blackberry’s Killer App?
gChat? I’m noticing more people using Gmail’s chat service on their Berries. That whole “ability to run background processes” thing isn’t quite as terrible as Apple makes it sound in their iPhone documentation. It’s pretty sweet to be able to message someone on-the-go across computing platforms. The push notifications on the iPhone don’t seem to be as visceral, as immediate, as connective.
That said, I’m not super-interested in developing software for Berries. Something about touch screens, accelerometers, GPS, video cameras, etc., is still intoxicating 
It’s guaranteed that Blackberry’s GChat client is using some kind of Push protocol. There’s no reason why a properly configured iPhone couldn’t do the same thing.
I tried turning on Push notification for GMail over IMAP/Exchange when it was released. It would drain my phone’s battery in two or three hours. I’m hesitant to do any more experimentation with Push because it sucks having your phone dead by coffee time.
Jared
2 Dec 09 at 4:59 pm
The gchat app doesn’t drain my battery too much. If I am constantly chatting on it then yes. I find my battery drains more from my twitter app. I really like being able to use gchat on the go. I tend just to sign in when I want to get a hold of you though.
Karen
2 Dec 09 at 6:09 pm
I think the best thing about BB that iPhone doesn’t have yet (correct me if I’m wrong) is the single view that aggregates emails, sms, gchat, bb messenger, facebook, and whatever else you have going on. Clicking anything in that list takes you to the appropriate app.
Mike Lin
5 Dec 09 at 10:32 pm
Well the 16 user-chosen apps on the desktop plus 4 on the quickbar are a pretty good dashboard, but since so few of them use the notification bubbles or changing icons intelligently, it’s a pretty dumb aggregate…
Jared
6 Dec 09 at 10:46 pm
I’m not referring to the desktop. There’s another view that lists ‘messages’ chronologically the same as the email/sms views, but with everything all together. It basically abstracts away the message’s medium. I think it’s gold, because whether it’s a tweet or an sms, why do you need to access it in a different way?
Mike Lin
6 Dec 09 at 11:08 pm
Oooh, a message view! The computer industry has been talking about one of those for years, I didn’t realize BlackBerry had implemented it! Google seems to think that building Wave is easier than trying to integrate the existing message systems…
Jared
7 Dec 09 at 9:59 am