Apple's Favoritism to Fastmail

[yohannparis]

Or maybe... FastMail created JMAP, ergo they are the one with the best implementation. Now Apple is working on moving iCloud to JMAP, and are working with FastMail as a JMAP production level service within mail.app.

[admdly]

Apple uses a proprietary IMAP extension that, until recently, any developer could use by generating a APNS certificate using a reverse engineered endpoint from macOS Server. They’ve since closed this.

Fastmail have had sanctioned access from Apple (via their own APNS topic ID) - https://www.fastmail.com/blog/push-email-now-available-in-io...

[whazor]

There were some changes last week to the JMAP Email Delivery Push Notifications[1], so that could be related.

[1] https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/commit/1335683f8b542c71bc41a4...

[mpercival531]

How iOS Mail gets push inbox updates working with third-party IMAP servers is in the public since 2015/2016 if you look hard enough. That has nothing to do with JMAP the protocol inherently.

[solarkraft]

I know you said „maybe“, but this is how rumors begin.

I can not find any reference to Apple having any involvement with or interest in JMAP (as much as I’d wish so).

[jarland]

The stock Mail app for iOS does not support JMAP.

[1over137]

Your alternate theory doesn't pass Occam's razor given Apple's general behaviour. Do you have any evidence?

[MrDarcy]

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Fastmail. Time to try them out.

[frizlab]

I am a happy subscriber since a long time ago (10 years, I think?). They are amazing. The job is done and there is nothing else in the way.

This and Kagi are my top subscriptions recommendations.

[jervant]

https://github.com/st3fan/dovecot-xaps-daemon

https://github.com/st3fan/dovecot-xaps-plugin

[st3fan]

Author here .. I haven't run it personally in a long time since I moved to hosted email. It was always an unofficial hack :-/

[1over137]

No updates in 6 year. Do you know if it still works?

[jbc1]

Does Fastmail really get push? I have a vague recollection that the reason I’m using their app over native ios Mail is because ios Mail was notifying me about emails with a noticeable delay.

[mpercival531]

It is “notify to pull”.

IMAP servers through APNS ping the iOS Mail about updates in certain pre-registered inboxes. Then iOS Mail re-fetches those inboxes.

The change signal is pushed; the data (inboxes/emails) aren’t.

[tyleo]

I feel like this is low on details. I despise social media comments as HN submissions.

What actually happened here?

[slau]

I kind of wrote about this: https://sebastian.lauwe.rs/blog/ios-migadu-notifications/

It’s more focused on how to get notifications to work with an email server that does not support XAPPLEPUSHSERVICE, but I also delve into how Apple abandoned the only reference implementation of XAPPLEPUSHSERVICE.

[paul-tharun]

MXRoute has been trying from ages to get push notifications on the IOS mail app but were getting ignored.

FastMail got access to it and it is not clear how, without any public announcement or documentation.

It is as if Apple just picked a favorite and went with it.

[mpercival531]

iOS Mail app does not support IMAP IDLE like any ordinary email clients.

It only supports a proprietary IMAP extension that uses Apple Push Notification Services (APNS) as a sideband channel for IMAP servers to signal the iOS Mail app.

Last I researched this (like… years ago), most IMAP-based email providers that are listed by the iOS Settings have implemented the extension, except for Gmail and Exchange. Fastmail then got on the train since 2015.

Not sure what is with the tweet targeting Fastmail specifically though.

[fluidcruft]

Yeah I looked at the link and first reaction is there are no receipts and failure to produce receipts registers with me as adequately explained as a "skill issue" (via some sort of corollary to Hanlon's razor). My outrage meter is unmoved.

[nerdjon]

I am a bit confused here as well, is there a difference between "Push" and the notifications on iOS?

I just checked my emails, I use Amazon Workmail and even that has push support. The only one for me that doesn't is my lesser used gmail.

To my knowledge I get alerts quickly with that email, I have never had an issue of not.

[nunez]

this was the reason why i moved to fastmail, and it works great