AIM on iPhone: push notification – and a big bug (bonus Gmail bug too)

AIM, AOL’s iPhone instant messaging client now now has Push notification services. So I bought a copy to play with it ($3).

I logged in with my old AIM username – it still worked. Then in Google Gmail Chat I liked my Gmail chat to the AIM account. That’s supposed to link chat buddies and the like.

I sent a few IMs back and forth from Gmail chat to my iPhone. That worked. I updated the status message on AIM/iPhone – that didn’t seem to propagate to the status message in Gmail Chat.

Then I clicked on the “Contacts” icon within AIM/iPhone and ….

It blew up.

Ok, so it just crashed. One time it actually launched GV Mobile, my iPhone Google Voice client, and it tried to open GV Mobile contacts. Mostly it just exited.

So that’s interesting.

Of course, being me, there are several kinds of bugs that could be in play

• GV Mobile and AIM could be truly interacting. I didn’t think that was possible on an iPhone!
• AIM/iPhone could be retching on the combination of linking my Gmail account to AIM and my synchronizing my iPhone with both Address Book and Gmail Contacts via Gmail ActiveSync Exchange services. The one time GV Mobile launch was an accident of an errant pointer.

I’m not a Gerserker on the desktop any more, but I guess on my iPhone I’m still on the edge.

I reported the bug via the iPhone App Store client ‘bug report’ button.

Update: There's a special bonus Gmail bug as well! You can sign into AIM from your chat settings, but you can't sign out from there. You have to find the sign out button hidden in your Chat drop down. I tried signing out of AIM on Gmail but that didn't fix the 'crash on touch' bug with AIM Contacts.

Update 2: Beejive 3.0 with push is now available. WTH, I spent $10 on that. I don't want to use my AIM credentials anyway; Beejive works with GoogleTalk credentials. I should have tried the ad-supported version of AIM first though! I'll give AIM a few days to fix things then I'll try requesting a refund through iTunes support.