In a blog post over the weekend and a press release issued today, Czech iPhone developer PoweryBase notes that Apple appears to be blocking Push Notifications on iPhones that have been unlocked for use on non-official wireless carriers. PoweryBase is the developer behind NotifyMe [App Store Links: Paid ($3.99), Free], a popular application that utilizes push notifications to offer reminders and to-do alerts to users on the go.
According to PoweryBase, push-enabled iPhone applications contact Apple's servers to request a unique ID to establish a link for Push Notifications, but Apple's servers fail to respond to such requests when coming from unlocked iPhones.
"When the Push based application such as NotifyMe requests an ID from APNS, the server responds within a second and identifies the device with the unique token. From that point, the connection between APNS and user's device is successfully established," said Pavel Serbajlo, PoweryBase's lead developer. "However, on a unofficially activated device, APNS keeps the application wait forever and does not provide any respond at all, keeping user wait infinitely or time out the connection, if the target application is capable of timing out."
PoweryBase reports that it has received an overwhelming proportion of its support requests since the application's release last week from users on unlocked iPhones who are unable to utilize the push service, and the company has no ability to address the issue since it is strictly under Apple's control. While PoweryBase is recommending that users on unlocked iPhones not purchase NotifyMe or other push-based applications, it is attempting to provide information to those users, directing them to the company's support pages for additional information if a user's application is unable to establish a connection with Apple's push servers after 20 seconds.
Update: The iPhone Dev Team has reportedly been working on a fix for this issue for some time now, so it appears that there may be a solution for those users on unlocked iPhones.
