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I have an iOS app that's essentially a long list. Every day new items are added to the top of the list. I'd like to badge the app and indicate how many new items have been added to the list. When the user opens the app the badge goes away.

What's the easiest and most cost effective way of doing this?

So far I've considered:

  • keep track of device IDs myself and send remote notifications to badge the app
  • use Urban Airship or similar service to keep track of the device IDs for me
  • just badge the app w/ a 24 hour timer

Keeping track of the device IDs is probably more work than I feel like doing. Urban Airship is surprisingly expensive: $200/mo for 0 - 10k users. The "clever" third option is perhaps the simplest and cheapest but imposes some constraints.

Perhaps the first option isn't that much work. Maybe someone has done this using AWS. Perhaps there's a cheaper alternative to Urban Airship. And there's probably something I just haven't considered. All feedback is appreciated!

Edit #1: Assume I add 5-10 new items every day. And assume I can add the items by 10 AM every day. Perhaps I can just have a 24 hour timer that badges the app w/ a random number between 5 and 10. The app grabs a config file whenever it starts up so I can turn off the timer remotely. Not sure if the timer would be stopped if the user completely killed the app. Of course the count wouldn't be perfect but it probably doesn't matter that much.

Edit #2: I'm wondering how much work it really is to just do it mostly myself. The device tokens can be stored in some table on AWS. I can write a simple script to send out notifications whenever I want. Implementing the feedback stuff might be annoying. But it could probably be done w/ something simple on AWS. Anyone done this and know how much work it really involves?

Eran
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SundayMonday
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  • Urban Airship is "surprisingly expensive" because keeping track of the device IDs is more work than most people feel like doing. – sosborn Jun 26 '12 at 05:22
  • Do you have a mechanism to track the devices now that `[UIDevice uniqueIdentifier]` is getting deprecated? – ThomasW Jun 26 '12 at 05:23
  • @sosborn I'm surprised by the lack of free tier. Why not "X remote notifications per month for free"? I'd take the time to integrate that and at least try it. If it works I'll probably convert to a paying customer. And the additional cost of giving me X notifications for free each month for a company in that business is trivial. – SundayMonday Jun 26 '12 at 05:26
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    You should contact them. I have never used them but their website says "Our Basic Plan is free to start and is eligible for a 45 day trial of Pro features." – sosborn Jun 26 '12 at 05:29
  • @sosborn Indeed I noticed that. I'm hesitant to update my app w/ code that might start costing me something in 45 days. That might obligate me to do another update. Just easier imo to have an "always free" tier. – SundayMonday Jun 26 '12 at 05:34
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    Then you should just put in the time to do it yourself. $20 a month will get you a server at Linode. – sosborn Jun 26 '12 at 06:02

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