IMAP IDLE / Push IMAP support for NON-Yahoo!

Question

Level 1

19 points

IMAP IDLE / Push IMAP support for NON-Yahoo!

Question:
How do we (or worst case, when will we be able to) tell the iPhone to use IMAP IDLE for non Yahoo! IMAP accounts? I have two accounts that handily support IMAP IDLE, and yet the iPhone only actually USES it with Yahoo!. For now I'm grudgingly using a throwaway Yahoo! account to notify me of incoming, but this is silly. Really, really silly.

I assumed that IMAP IDLE support, since it's in for Yahoo!, would be automatic for other IMAP accounts. Am I missing something? Was this an oversight? Is it a bug?

Please tell me it's not just a push (HA!) for Yahoo!, and that they have some kind of "exclusive" deal....

17" MBP C2D, Mac OS X (10.4.10), iPhone! :)

Posted on Jun 30, 2007 5:35 PM

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Answer 1

b noir

Level 9

72,324 points

Jun 30, 2007 5:47 PM in response to Masque

I'm no expert on this topic. But is the following document of any assistance with that?

iPhone: IMAP Mail folders are not visible

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Answer 2

PTBoater

Level 4

2,845 points

Jun 30, 2007 6:07 PM in response to Masque

I am in the same boat - my personal domain has supported IMAP for years and I have been enjoying push email with the Treo 650 and ChatterEmail. With the iPhone, the only IMAP accounts that support push seem to be Yahoo.

To add insult to injury, you can change the reply to email ID in your Yahoo acount - its hard coded @yahoo.com. So, if you wanted to use the push feature by having your work email forwarded to the Yahoo account, your replies would be coming from @yahoo.com and not your work ID.

Very, very lame. If IMAP works, it should WORK.

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Answer 3

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jun 30, 2007 6:08 PM in response to b noir

No - weirdly, this is the answer to the previous question I posted in another thread. 🙂

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Answer 4

Jun 30, 2007 6:59 PM in response to Masque

i too would like an official answer about IDLE support. i have a sneaking suspicion that it's not currently enabled. yahoo is probably using a genuine form push technology on the server. IDLE to the user looks identical to "push"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushe-mail#Simulation_using_traditionale-mail

i do know that IDLE isn't supported in OS X tiger's Mail.app, but will be supported in leopard's Mail.app. based on many of the technologies in the iphone that are leopard only (quick look, core animation) that IDLE support might be hidden away in there. fingers crossed we'll get an OS update to enable the feature.

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Answer 5

s5

Level 1

7 points

Jun 30, 2007 7:22 PM in response to Masque

Yep, another vote for IDLE support!

There's no way I'm ever going to use Yahoo! or .Mac or anything other than the email system I already use that has all my folders and 15 years worth of archived mail. IDLE is a standard, and it works just as well as push. Let's have it!

And for whatever it's worth, I tried setting up an Exchange account using my usual (non-Exchange) IMAP server, and while the account functioned properly, it still was left with checking mail every 15 minutes.

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Answer 6

Jun 30, 2007 7:44 PM in response to Masque

No - weirdly, this is the answer to the previous
question I posted in another thread. 🙂

HI

I was wondering if you could post an example of your path prefix if indeed you have gotten the folders to show properly?

Thanks

BK

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Answer 7

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jun 30, 2007 9:40 PM in response to Brian Knoblock

I tried:

/INBOX/
/INBOX
INBOX

The last one worked. 🙂

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Answer 8

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 1, 2007 5:54 AM in response to dmcalester

Indeed. From what I was told, Yahoo! is using IDLE. Perhaps that's incorrect. Either way, it's not hard to add. 🙂

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Answer 9

PTBoater

Level 4

2,845 points

Jul 1, 2007 6:05 AM in response to Masque

I tried:

/INBOX/
/INBOX
INBOX

The last one worked. 🙂

Thanks for the post. It reminded me these things are case sensitive. I did INBOX all caps, and now I see all my folders.

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Answer 10

Jul 1, 2007 5:03 PM in response to s5

Yep, another vote for IDLE support!

There's no way I'm ever going to use Yahoo! or .Mac
or anything other than the email system I already use
that has all my folders and 15 years worth of
archived mail. IDLE is a standard, and it works just
as well as push. Let's have it!

Internet-oriented protocols like IDLE (which maintain an open socket connection to the server) are very unfriendly to mobile networks.

Wireless operators don't usually allow things like this. It's why Blackberry is so well liked for mobile data, as it's much friendlier to the mobile data network, not holding on to resources indefinitely like IMAP idle.

Yes IMAP IDLE is a great standard for corporate mail servers, but internet scale services across mobile data networks is another thing entirely...

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Answer 11

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 1, 2007 5:48 PM in response to Nathanael Hayashi1

Are you seriously implying that a zero-traffic open socket is less friendly to the mobile operator than opening, checking, closing?

I open a socket once, query the server, and it sits. Waiting.

Versus:

I open a socket, query the server, close the connection. And I repeat this as often as I can hit the wee little 'check mail' button.

The latter case generates a TREMENDOUS amount of traffic when compared to keeping an open connection. Polling versus interrupt - there's a VERY GOOD reason that the rest of the mobile network works on an interrupt model: It's friendlier to both the devices and the network.

I'm totally lost as to why you'd think this is somehow different, but I'm very open to learning why I might be wrong.

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Answer 12

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 1, 2007 10:03 PM in response to Nathanael Hayashi1

Also, please explain why Yahoo! accounts on iPhones are connecting to, get this:

imap.apple.mail.yahoo.com

If it's not imap, why would they call it that?

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Answer 13

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 3, 2007 9:48 PM in response to Nathanael Hayashi1

...well? 🙂

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Answer 14

pauldy

Level 1

87 points

Jul 4, 2007 6:16 AM in response to Masque

Last night I ran a ettercap session hopping to get a glimpse of IDLE, 1 RECENT but it never came about. I'm beginning to wonder if the iPhone uses IDLE support at all, it would be nice if the push technology was leaked so we at least knew what we were looking at to getting it working. It also appeared to me that the yahoo push was not working at all does anyone have this working, it would be nice to see an exchange there over the wire to catch how that works.

For the record I tested imap and exchange for this feature and neither used the IDLE command against a dovecot imap server with IDLE enabled.

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Answer 15

Masque Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 4, 2007 6:24 PM in response to pauldy

Keep trying. Yahoo! seems to be having some issues. I guess that's what you get when you have 250,000+ new push accounts.

From what I know, they do use IDLE - it'd be great if you could confirm that or refute it! 🙂

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