activesync

Well, you're right, but let's put this into context: the only viable alternative at the moment is Microsoft's ActiveSync, another proprietary protocol[1].

There are free and open source implementations of Exchange ActiveSync that would allow native push support on iOS.

It's also a half assed ActiveSync without Outlook support and they don't have CalDAV and CardDAV as an alternative either.

Exchange (one of the earliest demands by corporate iPhone users was ActiveSync) 5.

ActiveSync push email is broken and support is parroting the same line over and over in the forums that the operations should be normal.

Meanwhile everyone was moving to ActiveSync so that they could actually get shit done rather than congratulating themselves on the purity of their model.

You may be required to enable ActiveSync in an out-of-band operation.

NuevaSync has supported this for years, via ActiveSync.

I think you give too much credit to ActiveSync.

* Activesync comes with Exchange, no other server setup necessary.

With WiFi and Bluetooth, decent web browsers available (Opera Mini and Mobile, plus some WebKit forks/wrappers), Google syncing through ActiveSync, for a long time upgrading to a newer phone and OS was not a priority.

From my own usage of ActiveSync I remember the data networks of the era were not great with push protocols, at least not compared to the almost magic instantaneousness of Blackberry email and their custom solution.

Activesync (I think) used Exchange mail rules to do the same thing, and the iPhone mail client could use Activesync.

The other half of what killed Blackberry was Microsoft Activesync.

Activesync was good enough that a lot of smaller customers could stop paying the extra Blackberry fee to their carrier, the extra Blackberry fee to their cloud host (OR the cost of maintaining an extra server in their colo), and stop carrying their 2nd phone.