BeeJive is my IM solution of choice. I don't use a lot of the more advanced features, but the reason I keep going back to it is just this: speed. It gets me in, working, and back out fast. And BeeJive IM 3.0 with support for iPhone 3.0's new Push Notification service is no exception. In fact, it rules.
One of the problems with Push Notification is that while the actual alerts are speedy, acting on them is not. Take IM for example. If you enable Text Alerts, an SMS-style popup window presents, tells you the IM app has a new message, and lets you Dismiss or View. If you View, the iPhone then has to 1) close the alert, 2) launch the app, 3) re-establish the app's server connection (Push Notification uses a different, Apple-powered server), 4) download the IM to the app, and potentially 5) issue the app's own internal alert if that's enabled as well.
That can be some overhead. Sure, maybe iPhone 3G S (for speed, remember) will quicken the pace, but BeeJiveIM on an iPhone 3G was impressively responsive already.
Testing it over the last couple days, alerts presented, I tapped them, and everything listed about was handled smoothly and quickly. So, again, I was able to get in, work, and get back out fast. It's everything that was great about BeeJiveIM 2.0, plus the convenience of Push and other iPhone 3.0 features.
Like what? Well, BeeJiveIM 3.0 also supports copy and paste. Tap and hold to highlight an entire chat bubble and popup the Copy command. (No sliders for selecting multiple bubbles in the version I tested). To paste, start a new chat (which means typing at least one character), then tap inside the entry box to get the Select, Select All, Paste popup.
Inside a text entry box (an IM you're typing), you get the full slider-to-select precise text treatment.
BeeJiveIM 3.0 for iPhone and iPod should be hitting the iTunes App Store any time now. We'll update with the link as soon as it's live.
Screenshots after the break!
