Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Beejive IM Released

beejive

what is up with the price? gees! i mean i have $16 dollars, they could change the price to .99 and still make big $$$$. i have had the web based version for a while and i love it, why should i have the app store version if the web version is great, unless they drop it and make me buy the app store version, which then i will.
anyone feeling sorry for me, or am i wining too much <voilin music>
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I don't see Beejive lowering the price point on the iPhone more than they alreay have. Nor should they. You should evaluate whether this app is worth it to you before buying. For me it is.
 
Battery Question

I am confused about how this app will affect battery life. If I set the session logout at 24 hours, does that mean the app is actually running in the background for 24 hours?

I didn't think that being logged in with mobilechat would drain the battery, but maybe I was wrong. I guess the question is: Does being logged into their server mean that you are also running the app on your phone and therefore draining your battery? :confused:
 
$15.99 is pretty good considering their blackberry version costs $19.95

The one iffy thing I am having is that...

It looks so freaking ugly. The overlay text input, the logos for the IM clients, the use of the SMS bubbles in the chats overview (good in individual chat...but when you put text in the SMS bubble in a grouped table view cell...gaaah). Of course functionality comes first, but being who I am, looks does affect my decision. But if it really is stable and actually keeps you on for 24 hours...

Has anyone tried keeping it on for a few hours yet?

kb152 said:
I am confused about how this app will affect battery life. If I set the session logout at 24 hours, does that mean the app is actually running in the background for 24 hours?

I didn't think that being logged in with mobilechat would drain the battery, but maybe I was wrong. I guess the question is: Does being logged into their server mean that you are also running the app on your phone and therefore draining your battery? :confused:
Click to expand...

Zero affect on battery life. Remember, applications cannot run in the background. Everything about instant messenger is on the server: received IMs, status, etc. The only thing programs do is show you all of that and let you make changes (such as sending IMs, etc.)

It's confusing because we're used to desktop applications signing us off when we close the program. When we close a desktop chat program, the application tells the server to sign us off.

What MobileChat, Palringo, and now BeeJive do is that they never tell the server to sign us off. Instead, they tell the server that they have simply closed the program. This allows the server to go "okay, time to queue up messages". And in these chat client's case, it also says "after a certain amount of time, then we're gonna sign them off".

The only drainage that this will cause is the electricity at wherever BeeJive has their servers.
 
Niiro13 said:
$15.99 is pretty good considering their blackberry version costs $19.95

The one iffy thing I am having is that...

It looks so freaking ugly. The overlay text input, the logos for the IM clients, the use of the SMS bubbles in the chats overview (good in individual chat...but when you put text in the SMS bubble in a grouped table view cell...gaaah). Of course functionality comes first, but being who I am, looks does affect my decision. But if it really is stable and actually keeps you on for 24 hours...

Has anyone tried keeping it on for a few hours yet?
Click to expand...

its been running perfectly for me since i bought it last night, so thats about 8 hours or so at least since i forgot exactly what time i bought it. i debated the price on it too, then i decided to give it a shot and now i think i'll be able to drop that unlimited text plan thats $20 and go to a 1000 message plan or less and save the money this app cost me in just two months. i've been texting with the app to my friend all morning.
 
I bought this on the strength of the Push email alert (whichmaybecone redundent when Apple put Push in the OS) and must say am impressed. Email arrived with an embedded link to launch BeeJive, clicked on it and the App launched in a chat window. Only downside was the chat window showed the contact as offline. Closed the window and clicked on the contact again (who was now showing online) to launch a new chat window and all was well, continuing the conversation without a hitch.

One grumble; don't like the way your text entry screen is types over the chat history. It looks messy and at times confusing, especially if you're trying to refer to it in something you're writing. Other than that, so far so good.
 
Seems like a great app!

I want to buy it but have a couple of questions for the users that have it. Do the emotions work (smiles,etc) and the 24/7 thing. So basically, if I log in and exit the app, I will appear online to all my contacts for 24 hours until I login again? Is that right or am I missing something? Thanks for the feed back!
 
Originally Posted by diesel
you can configure beejive to email IM notifications to:
your_10digit_phone_number@txt.att.net

IM's will appear on your phone as a sms message nearly instantaneously if a buddy messages you while the app is closed. a perfect workaround until apple gets around to releasing their push feature

Can anybody confirm that this feature works???
 
Vandam500 said:
I want to buy it but have a couple of questions for the users that have it. Do the emotions work (smiles,etc) and the 24/7 thing. So basically, if I log in and exit the app, I will appear online to all my contacts for 24 hours until I login again? Is that right or am I missing something? Thanks for the feed back!
Click to expand...

Can't answer emoticons, but yes, if you login and exit, then you will appear online for 24 hours in the background until they kick you off. If this works like Palringo, MobileChat (theoretical), and AIM, then it resets this timer every time you go back into the application. The 24 hours should simply mean that if you don't go back into the application for 24 hours. If you IM daily, then your friends will see you online for days straight :p.
 
jhkaplan said:
How fast is the txt message alert for you? I'm still waiting on a test message that I sent about an hour ago!
Click to expand...

99% of the time it's almost instantaneous but I have gotten texts via AT&T that were hours late before. What I like about it is that it's a little faster than push mail but it also keeps the notifications out of email and puts them all in one thread in the sms app. Minimal maintenance.
 
Vandam500 said:
Originally Posted by diesel
you can configure beejive to email IM notifications to:
your_10digit_phone_number@txt.att.net

IM's will appear on your phone as a sms message nearly instantaneously if a buddy messages you while the app is closed. a perfect workaround until apple gets around to releasing their push feature

Can anybody confirm that this feature works???
Click to expand...

Took a whole 10 seconds to try it. And yes, it works fine.
 
my 2 cent "First impression" review...

I was very eagerly awaiting Beejive – as a former user of it when it was still Jivetalk on the BB I was excited when I found out they’d be releasing a native app. Up until the latest revisions of Palringo I also used the Beejive webapp as my main for of IM’ing. (I jumped all over MobileChat when it came out and it’s the only app I‘ve paid for and deleted off my iPhone – its useless.)

Anyway – Beejive is very stable. I know its only been a day (if even) but it hasn’t crashed, frozen or kicked me out (yet). While I do love Palringo, occasionally it did knock me off... Not often, but enough that I know it wasn’t an isolated issue.

The ability to customize how long you stay connected for is great – that to me is worth the price. Palringo is great and they seem VERY responsive to their customers which is amazing for a free app, but the 15 minutes doesn’t seem long enough. I have Beejive set to 4 hours and that’s perfect. (and there is more if I need it!)

I like the flexibility of Beejive, you can add/remove/edit contacts, keep a separate favorites list and send SMSes – I don’t believe those features are available on any of the other apps. One other thing I love (which others may not care about) is the option to view contacts by account. This was one of those features I never would have thought I needed, but I like.. It really helps in cleaning up your buddy lists without having to sign off/on to see if you have someone added to multiple accounts.

The chat interface is very nice and clean, I do have some recommendations about it which I’ll list below – but it’s still very useful. I do like that it shows whether or not an online contact is mobile (Palringo doesn’t do this yet, but I believe I saw they will in a future release) and it shows you the service they are on.

The Pop-up screen for typing takes some getting used to. Palringo and Beejive the Web-client use a small text box above the keyboard, while I'm used to that it quite content with it this is different - not bad, just different. I'm sure in a week I'll be so used to it and it'll be just as naturla as the "old" way.

I don’t really have any negative things to say – nothing really bothers me with it, but I do have some recommendations or suggestions for features I’d like to see implemented to make this really an ideal app (for me at least, and hopefully for some others):

1) Offer the ability to hide the Buddy Icons.. it just takes up too much space on the screen. Most of my buddies don’t have them (or have generic ones) – If I really wanted to see them I could check the account info screen. (and its also available within the Chat Window, so its almost redundant.

2) Offer a minimized view... By removing the icons and then maybe condensing the on-screen info to 2 lines you’d be able to get more names on at once. Maybe even make the font size a little smaller in the chat window when texting. As for the buddy list right now it uses this format:
Steve Jobs (Nickname)
SteveJRules (Screenname)
I’m away counting my money (Status)

I'd prefer an option to have it minimized theme to display:
Nickname
Status

3) Include email notifications for the accounts associated w/ an email address. I’m not sure if this is do-able based on App Store limitations, but I know many desktop chat apps will give you the option to be notified if an email gets sent to one of your accounts – this would be great to incorporate. I don’t use the email accounts associated w/ all of my chat apps regularly and don’t have them set up on the iPhone, but if I got something it would be nice to be notified without having to go and check. (This is sort of an added benefit, I know its not part of IM functionality but I’m so used to it with my desktop apps, having something like that would really make me think twice about having the need to log into my desktop!) Also, I like to keep my phone on silent all day at work – if I keep Beejive open and I get a real email I don’t know about it - I have to close out periodically to check…

4) IM notification badge on the icon. Palringo just added this – it would be a nice feature and save me the few minutes from signing in to check if theres anything waiting. (I don’t use the email push notifications)

Overall I’m pleased with the app. To me, it’s worth the price. I paid more to have it on my BB and it’s a company I trust. Hopefully they are responsive to customer feedback as I’ll be sending the recommendations above to them. (I tried to participate in their beta program but since I didn’t have beta experience I didn’t make the cut).

Anyway – that’s my first impression…
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

Vandam500 said:
I want to buy it but have a couple of questions for the users that have it. Do the emotions work (smiles,etc) and the 24/7 thing. So basically, if I log in and exit the app, I will appear online to all my contacts for 24 hours until I login again? Is that right or am I missing something? Thanks for the feed back!
Click to expand...

Emoticons are not yet supported. According to the app store description it will be in a future release.
 
mistertomlinson said:
It's a simple IM client! I don't care how poorly the competition is doing, it's an IM client and nothing more!
Click to expand...

If it's so simple, the SDK is free, you can code it yourself...
An IM client is far for simple. Especially since they have to work around limitations of Apple SDK - something games do not have to do.

BeatMaker is $19.99 and THAT'S an app that deserves the price they are asking. Let's compare the two apps: One is a fully functional software music studio with features I would have NEVER expected to be available on a cell phone, but rather a desktop platform and the other is an... IM client.
Click to expand...

And once you have paid $19.99 on BeatMaker, the money is in the company pocket. Once the costs of development are covered, it's 100% gain and 0% work.
When you pay Beejive IM, part of that cost covers the monthly maintainance that is needed for this kind of application. To work around the limitations of the SDK, they have to maintain a server. A server costs money, each month, no matter if you sold anything that month. So, when you pay $19.99, you are also (hopefully) paying for years of server access.
Besides, BeatMaker is self-sufficient (well, at least until Roland finds out that some copyrighted instrument was duplicated or something). For all I know, an application like Beejive IM might be paying royalties to support some of its protocoles.

I agree that applications on the iPhone platform compete with each others, not with applications on the other platforms. However, developers exist in the real world. If applications on the iPhone sell for one tenth of applications on other platforms, the developers won't be paid a tenth of the pay, nor will the accountant or the landlord for the office.
If the price the iPhone market is willing to be for the like of TomTom is $10 rather than $100 (the price on Windows Mobile), the result won't be a $10 TomTom - because at $10 TomTom would be losing money with each sale (they have to pay royalties for their datas). It will just be no TomTom at all. It will just have proven that the iPhone market is not mature enough to support mature applications.
 
16 dollars is a bit steep... and mobile chat already left a bad taste in my mouth.

I may still purchase it, though. I wish they'd give some info on if they plan on having a sale or not.

9.99 would be a much better price point (if not lower) and I would've purchased it without hesitation. I had the blackberry version of this program for a demo, but I could never justify paying 30 dollars for an IM program even if it is a lifetime of free updates. I opted to use the default blackberry IM clients which were great IMO.

I have no problem paying for quality software, but I will feel a little jipped/silly if Apple releases some type of iChat program with the push notifications - and it's better and free. It's the end of September and still no word from Apple on their push service... this may be the best solution until then.
 
kb152 said:
I am confused about how this app will affect battery life. If I set the session logout at 24 hours, does that mean the app is actually running in the background for 24 hours?
Click to expand...

No, because it can't run in the background. No application using the official SDK can, because Apple doesn't want background applications. And if they don't use the official SDK, they can't be sold on the AppStore.

That's actually one of the reasons for the price. To work around the SDK limitation, Beejive had to setup a centralized server. The server handles you IM sessions - it's the one that is logged for 24 hours. That's the server using push email to send notifications - since that's the only notification mechanism that works on the current SDK. The iPhone application merely connects to Beejive server.
In order for that to work, Beejive has to maintain a server that can handle potentially dozens of thousands of simultaneous sessions, each supporting several IM protocoles. That costs money, both in server maintainance and in design and development time...
 
Lictor said:
No, because it can't run in the background. No application using the official SDK can, because Apple doesn't want background applications. And if they don't use the official SDK, they can't be sold on the AppStore.

That's actually one of the reasons for the price. To work around the SDK limitation, Beejive had to setup a centralized server. The server handles you IM sessions - it's the one that is logged for 24 hours. That's the server using push email to send notifications - since that's the only notification mechanism that works on the current SDK. The iPhone application merely connects to Beejive server.
In order for that to work, Beejive has to maintain a server that can handle potentially dozens of thousands of simultaneous sessions, each supporting several IM protocoles. That costs money, both in server maintainance and in design and development time...
Click to expand...

And unlike MobileChat, this one actually works.
 
Lictor said:
No, because it can't run in the background. No application using the official SDK can, because Apple doesn't want background applications. And if they don't use the official SDK, they can't be sold on the AppStore.

That's actually one of the reasons for the price. To work around the SDK limitation, Beejive had to setup a centralized server. The server handles you IM sessions - it's the one that is logged for 24 hours. That's the server using push email to send notifications - since that's the only notification mechanism that works on the current SDK. The iPhone application merely connects to Beejive server.
In order for that to work, Beejive has to maintain a server that can handle potentially dozens of thousands of simultaneous sessions, each supporting several IM protocoles. That costs money, both in server maintainance and in design and development time...
Click to expand...

It really is a good idea:) but I can imagine that once Apple releases push notifications that the price of this should go down although the price does justify it since it does cost money to maintain those servers.
 
Lictor said:
No, because it can't run in the background. No application using the official SDK can, because Apple doesn't want background applications. And if they don't use the official SDK, they can't be sold on the AppStore.

That's actually one of the reasons for the price. To work around the SDK limitation, Beejive had to setup a centralized server. The server handles you IM sessions - it's the one that is logged for 24 hours. That's the server using push email to send notifications - since that's the only notification mechanism that works on the current SDK. The iPhone application merely connects to Beejive server.
In order for that to work, Beejive has to maintain a server that can handle potentially dozens of thousands of simultaneous sessions, each supporting several IM protocoles. That costs money, both in server maintainance and in design and development time...
Click to expand...

So in theory, when Apple releases the Push Notification service there will be no use for BeeJives centralized server, correct? It also would negate the 16 dollar price tag.
 
Vandam500 said:
It really is a good idea:) but I can imagine that once Apple releases push notifications that the price of this should go down although the price does justify it since it does cost money to maintain those servers.
Click to expand...

Why would the price go down? the $16 is still cheaper than what they charge for the blackberry. I don't think they set one price to screw over the early adopters and then lower in in a few weeks.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is a quality product - unlike Mobilechat and to an extent Palringo - Beejive has a following and reputation from those who have used their app on the BB.

MC is complete poo, maybe they'll fix the app but they've already done damage to their reputation which will be hard to fix. Palringo is free and as long as they stay that way they'll definitely get people to use their app (especially because its also a quality app!); in time they may charge for it or make it ad supported - but right now they've got a good thing going.

I was expecting Beejive to sell for about $10 - so the $16 was a disappointment to me, but seeing how they've been successful in the past (while still charging more for the BB app) I can't knock them - I'm quite sure they've done their research.

And someone else mentioned this which I think may be a good reason for the price point - it limits the people who use it and helps control the amount of users and server usage. Who knows, maybe MC wouldn't have had the initial problems if they charged more and were able to ease into things - they got slammed from the get-go and never recovered. Palringo is free but they only keep you logged in for 15 minutes so they can better maintain what the server can handle; if they charged for the app maybe they could offer the 24 hour live connection.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

So in theory, when Apple releases the Push Notification service there will be no use for BeeJives centralized server, correct? It also would negate the 16 dollar price tag.[/QUOTE]
No you are incorrect. Beejives centralized server will still be needed to maintain the connections to each IM service when the app is closed. This is a common misconception of Apples Push Notification service which is yet to be released. All it is going to do is provide Beejive a way to notify you of an IM when you don't have the app open (instead of there current email notification).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back