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Learning the contract is great, thank you for the work! How about the infra stack used by imessages? Does anyone have intel on that? The scale is incredible, wh

Learning the contract is great, thank you for the work! How about the infra stack used by imessages? Does anyone have intel on that? The scale is incredible, which always makes me wonder how it can be so good while other apple web services (forums, dev portals, etc) can be so buggy and half baked

nicolas_17 3y ago
The actual mind-blowing scale is that Apple's push notification service isn't just carrying iMessages. It's also carrying push notifications for every third-party messaging app. And the non-messaging apps with notifications too. And the silent internal notifications. You added a meeting to your calendar on your Mac? Push notification to your iPhone to tell it that the iCloud data changed and it needs to update. Changed a file on iCloud Drive? Push notification to sync your other devices. Got a phone call, and it starts ringing on your Mac too via Continuity? Push notification (encrypted like an iMessage). Just how many messages are going through that service every second?!
- stouset 3y ago
  > Just how many messages are going through that service every second?! I’m confident in saying at least six.
  - xwolfi 3y ago
    It's more than bitcoin !
    - paulmd 3y ago
      muh off-chain scaling
    - zxt_tzx 3y ago
      but but but BTC just hit $44k?!? /s
- Lockal 3y ago
  Centralized notifications is not a "genius solution", it is the "only possible solution" for power-constrained devices, if you think about it. Same thing applies to Android: in ideal world it keeps a single connection open to GCM servers to listen for notifications for ALL apps on the device, and then routes messages to the appropriate applications they are intended for.
  - nicolas_17 3y ago
    I never said centralized notifications is conceptually a genius solution. I said actually building a system that can handle so many billion notifications is impressive. I'm curious how it works internally...

nicolas_17 3y ago

The actual mind-blowing scale is that Apple's push notification service isn't just carrying iMessages. It's also carrying push notifications for every third-party messaging app. And the non-messaging apps with notifications too. And the silent internal notifications. You added a meeting to your calendar on your Mac? Push notification to your iPhone to tell it that the iCloud data changed and it needs to update. Changed a file on iCloud Drive? Push notification to sync your other devices. Got a phone call, and it starts ringing on your Mac too via Continuity? Push notification (encrypted like an iMessage). Just how many messages are going through that service every second?!

stouset 3y ago
> Just how many messages are going through that service every second?! I’m confident in saying at least six.
- xwolfi 3y ago
  It's more than bitcoin !
  - paulmd 3y ago
    muh off-chain scaling
  - zxt_tzx 3y ago
    but but but BTC just hit $44k?!? /s
Lockal 3y ago
Centralized notifications is not a "genius solution", it is the "only possible solution" for power-constrained devices, if you think about it. Same thing applies to Android: in ideal world it keeps a single connection open to GCM servers to listen for notifications for ALL apps on the device, and then routes messages to the appropriate applications they are intended for.
- nicolas_17 3y ago
  I never said centralized notifications is conceptually a genius solution. I said actually building a system that can handle so many billion notifications is impressive. I'm curious how it works internally...