I suspect this feeling comes from the shoddy design. Throw a few rounded corners at in, and some glossy buttons, and people will be all "oohh Web 2.0".
Has it been entirely proven that the iPhone only checks IMAP accounts on a 15 minute interval? I've never stop watched it but I feel like it's much shorter. I've seem some speculation that it depends on wifi vs. 3G connectivity. It seems to me that messages show up in my desktop client (IMAP-IDLE aware) only a few minutes before they hit my iPhone. My gut feeling is the iPhone is probably 3 or 4 minutes behind my desktop client (IMAP-IDLE aware) Has anyone been able to confirm or deny the 15 minute interval or is it just my imagination and poor sense of time?
(I do have a separate MobileMe e-mail account account as well. Perhaps it changes the IMAP intervals system wide?)
If you choose to disregard the privacy issue, don't get too attached. Their privacy policy states that they plan to charge for the service once it's out of beta:
"Information collected may include: contact information such as your name, phone/cell numbers (during the course of technical support incidences), e-mail address(es), e-mail password(s) (to monitor your mail account for new messages), an identifying question for security check purposes, billing information (if you choose to join our service post Beta) and information related to those of our service(s) in which you have expressed an interest."
They don't mirror your mail, you receive a pushed mail on the msgpush account telling you new mail has arrived.
You still have to read it on your regular account
Yes, "something else" the iPhone supports in OS 3.0, which is "push notifications".
These is a background notification service any iPhone app can use that can show a text message on the screen and update a counter (aka "badge") on the icon of an app that isn't running.
Push notification in iPhone OS 3.x is not to be confused with Exchange or ActiveSync so-called Push email.
yes, i remember doing this on the 1st gen iphone. just modify the plist for the mail settings and change the 15 to 5 or something else. i remember there being a plutil binary in cydia to be able to do this while ssh'd into the iphone.