Right away upon opening the app, you’ll be asked if you want to enable push notifications, and you’ll also encounter a dialog box asking you about contact syncing. Turning syncing on will automatically add links to the Facebook profiles of all the people it finds in your address book, and you can also choose to replace the photos for those contacts with their Facebook profile pictures.

As for the push notifications, they apply whenever someone sends you a new message, or whenever you receive a new wall post, friend request, friend confirmation, photo tag, event invitations and updates, and comments. If that seems like a lot, you can go ahead and selectively disable any options you don’t want to receive a push notification about. I’m actually very happy with the implementation. It means I can disable email updates for most of those things. Here’s what it looks like when you receive a message. Not too much info, but it gets the job done.

Contact syncing seems to be a little hiccupy at the moment, but that might only be because I’m also using MobileMe to sync my address book across all computers. It does appear to be working very slowly despite some error messages, though, but I find that the “fb://” format links don’t open anything on the Mac. Probably because the Facebook app developers didn’t count on people who have a desktop syncing system implemented. They automatically launch the FB app on the iPhone, though.

What do you think? Well done, or were you looking for more from Facebook push?

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One of the only reasons I’ve stuck it out with my MobileMe account, despite numerous quirks, annoyances and outright failures, is push email. For the iPhone to be useful to me as a business device, I need it to keep me up to date on my email in real time (or as close to it as MobileMe’s push can achieve). Contact and calendar syncing are nice, but both can now be done using your Google information if you’d rather not pay the $100 annual MobileMe subscription fee. Gmail push would complete the picture, and it could be on the way.

And by could, I mean it definitely exists, as demonstrated by TechCrunch’s hands-on with the app that makes it possible. Yes, it’s via a third-party app, and there is no official word from either Google or Apple that Gmail push on the iPhone has finally arrived. Not surprising, considering the money Apple stands to lose in MobileMe subscriptions if Gmail, which is not only incredibly popular, but free, manages to replicate the one trick MobileMe still has up its sleeve.

The app, called GPush, is the product of a development company called Tiverias, and it uses Gmail’s IMAP IDLE feature and Apple’s push notifications to deliver near-live updates from your Gmail inbox. All the app itself does is provide a login screen, after which point you never really have to open it again. Once set up, it will display text alerts containing the sender address and subject from each new email you receive. That is, if it’s allowed to.

The question surrounding GPush isn’t whether it can pull off what it claims to be able to. That it can do just fine, as TechCrunch’s tests prove. The question is, will Apple ever allow GPush to exist in a form that’s widely available to all users via the App Store? Cupertino has a vested interest in blocking Gmail push, since some users (like me, for instance) might walk away from MobileMe were it to become available, resulting in an obvious loss in revenue.

If Apple does block the app, regardless of what (if any) excuse it cites as the reason for the rejection, it will cast even more doubt on the already suspect App Store submission review process. Basically, it seems like the only reason to keep IMAP IDLE support out of the built-in Mail app is to block Gmail push, so it wouldn’t surprise me if GPush never sees the light of day. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

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The app, which expires in seven days, appears to only be available through the U.S. iTunes store, which doesn’t seem to have stopped Apple from sending out emails to all developers, regardless of their country of residence. The email specifies that devs should choose U.S. English as the app’s default language at first run, which suggests that they are fully aware that people already have or are able to create U.S. store accounts without actually being residents.

A forum thread on MacRumors details some developers’ progress so far with the test app, which is varied. Some, like Ben Dodson, have successfully received push notifications from the app (check out a lengthy post on his blog for details and screenshots). Others have yet to receive any notifications at all, myself included. A cursory survey of those who’ve also been unable to receive any push updates from AP finds that most, if not all, are located outside of the U.S., but I don’t have nearly enough information to cite that as the definite cause.

Chime in and let us know your experience if you’re also helping Apple test the app.

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My enthusiastic use and promotion of Growl should come as no surprise to regular readers of The Apple Blog. While some dismiss it as an annoyance reminiscent of the Windows notification popups, others — like myself – view it as a way be informed without stopping what I am currently doing (and that is definitely not the case with its Windows pseudo-counterpart).

Even though many of the applications and utilities that help me with my daily workflows have embedded Growl support in some fashion, there is one use of Growl that may help convert even the most stalwart Growl skeptic: Hardware Growler.

Setting Up Hardware Growler

You’ll find this handy utility in the “Extras” folder on your Growl installer disk image. It’s main purpose is to fire off a Growl notification each time devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac, and includes support for FireWire, USB and filesystem volumes (i.e. disks) as well as Bluetooth devices and network interfaces. Unfortunately, to make the best of use of Hardware Growler, you will have to do some work to get it installed properly.

First, copy the “Hardware Growler” application to either “/Applications” or “/Applications/Utilities” on your Mac. The application itself is nothing to write home about. Double-click on it to see a very sparse menu and an innocuous Dock icon. The “Preferences” window is even sparse, only providing a means to enable or disable a notification about what devices are currently connected upon startup of Hardware Growler (not very useful, at least for me).

You can leave Hardware Growler running this way and it will go about it’s job quite nicely. However, since it is not really an interactive program, it would be best to “make it go away”, especially if you happen to miss-hit a Cmd-Q and accicentally cancel out of it. The easiest way to accomplish this is to modify one of the Hardware Growler configuration files.

Depending on where you decided to install Hardware Growler, either open /Applications/HardwareGrowler.app/Contents/Info.plist or /Applications/Utilities/HardwareGrowler.app/Contents/Info.plist add the following two lines after the <dict> line:

   <dict>
      <key>LSUIElement</key>
   <true/>

You will need to quit and re-start Hardware Grolwer for this setting to take effect. (CocoaDev has more good info on the LSUIelement propery.)

Next, to make it even easier to ensure Hardware Growler is running after you login, go to System Preferences > Accounts and add it as a “Login Item” and check the “Hide” checkbox just for good measure.

Using Hardware Growler to Spy on Your System & Applications

Because Hardware Growler hooks itself into the device events on your system, you now have the opportunity to see some of what happens underneath the pretty OS X GUI. While you should be aware of when you connect FireWire and USB devices, Hardware Growler still notifies you when those devices are inserted or removed and having a notification of that may help troubleshoot issues.

For me, it is very handy to be notified when my Option Express 3G card suddenly decides to disconnect itself from the card slot and it has saved me a ton of grief. Expanding on that particular example, you will see that many PCI ExpressCard adapters show up as USB devices. This is actually the most common way for vendors to utilize the ExpressCard slot and you really are not getting much benefit out of using the card versus an external adapter, apart from freeing up an external USB slot for other uses.

One activity that is especially interesting to have a view into is when your applications that are set to auto-update are downloading and mounting disk images. I managed to “spy” on the Google updater (no screen capture, though) doing it’s work just this past week (I had actually forgotten I let it auto-update).

Gaining a view into network-related events is also pretty handy. Not only will you see which adapter is connecting, you will also see the current MAC (unique hardware) address and all changes of IP address. This can be especially handy when you are attempting to diagnose connection issues.

If you do decide to give Hardware Growler a try, let it run in the background for a week as you go about your workflow. I think you’ll find the experience illuminating and you may just gain more insight into how your system and many of your applications work.

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You can choose whether it starts on login, whether you are given an extra notification when battery resources are at a level you define and can restrict display if designated applications are currently running:

You also have complete control over the information presented in the alerts:

With my Growl configuration, the notifications look like this:

   

It’s a very simple application that does not require a substantial amount of system resources (as shown below). There have been times when I have had the MacBook Pro become unplugged and not noticed the screen dim only to discover much later that I’m on 50% battery left. This utility would have definitely come in handy then and is now a part of my “must have” applications.

I had a bit of trouble trying to send a PayPal donation to the author via the link on the page, but managed to do so via the standard PayPal “Send Money” option. As always, I highly encourage folks to support independent development on the Mac.

If you use Unplugged or have suggestions for other small-but-useful utilities, drop a note in the comments.

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