I really appreciate the request for Rooms @ Android (or even on other platforms).
But its finally not THAT easy!

The thing is, I love my Mac, iPhone & iPad. And I love most of the things Apple creates and does. And developing for a device which I dont wanna use, just doesn’t make much sense to me.
Android is like “Linux on PC” – I mean, don’t get me wrong:
It works, and is much better than windows (mobile), but I just want something which works (mostly) right out of the box, is nice to look at and easy to use

And I just don’t want to run off everytime something goes wrong or just doesn’t fit!
Instead, I want to (try to) make Apple listen to us developers. To fix their huge mess of stupid rules (there are good ones too for sure).
And tell Apple that some of their employees just seem not willing to do their work (like just replying to emails) like they should!

If, like me, you think this platform is many times worse than any supposed monopoly Microsoft ever had, then you won’t touch the iPhone/Pad/Pod, and you’ll develop for open platforms.

using the “voip mode” is not essentially using this “green bar” at the top.

A short explanation:
Its just that the system itself “holds” the connection open, which the app created and still puts the app into “sleep mode” when its “closed” like all other iOS4 updated apps do for using “fast switch”.
Then if some bytes come in on this network connection it wakes up the app for some seconds, lets it do its work (answering/checking the data/reacting) and then puts it back to sleep. THAT’s why I wrote, that its absolutely nice implemented by Apple. On my testing iPhone it runs all day long and only makes a very little battery drain compared to an app which would run 100% all day long.

——

For the “network service” you describe. Thats the way “bouncers” work. Because its just not possible to modify all IRC servers in the world, there are those proxys/bouncers.
But unfortunately, if you speak with some bnc providers, there are a little handful of “big” providers which have so called “trust” on all big IRC networks. Most (and new) providers don’t get any, since the IRC networks itself seem not to be in the mood to issue new trusts. (or just get payed by those big networks to not do this just guessing hrhr)

Hope that clears some things up.

It’s annoying that Apple hasn’t yet addressed the use-case of apps that favour a persistent network connection, but there we go.

They are at least allowing the background task completion for this sort of thing, which gets you 10 minutes of multitasking and then you fire a local notification to prompt the user to quickly return to your app if they care about keeping the connection.

Or you build a network service that people can pay to use which the iPhone client connects to and pushes notifications to them when they’re disconnected

Whether or not the App Store process is confusing, slow and imperfect, trying to get around the rules with ugly hacks is not a good idea IMHO.