Figures 1, 2, & 3: Boxcar splashscreen, OAuth Twitter authentication upon launch, and Boxcar Settings

The people at appremix were nice enough to send us a code for Boxcar ($2.99; direct link to iTunes) to let us test their new push notification service for the iPhone and iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0 that notifies you whenever you receive an @ reply or mention on Twitter, or whenever a DM is sent your way. As many of you may recall from our comparative review of BeejiveIM and IM+ chat clients for the iPhone/iPod touch, IM+ ($9.99; direct link to iTunes) already offers this same functionality alongside some rudimentary Twitter client options. Also, iTwitter arrived the other day offering push notifications, but only between other users running iTwitter ($3.99; direct iTunes link). Also, since we first spotted Boxcar, iTweetReply, a full standalone Twitter client, ($1.99; direct link to iTunes) has appeared in the App Store offering similar functionality, although their Application Description notes "Replies and Direct Messages using Push appear as an SMS and enable you to quickly reply," so without testing it is unclear if this occurs via normal Push or if it is actually piped through SMS (which could cost you over time, depending upon your SMS plan).

Unlike all these other options, Boxcar is focused on doing one thing: sending you Push notifications of mentions and Direct Messages, and it serves as a basic Direct Message Twitter client. Since Twitter's API doesn't currently support Push notifications, Boxcar does this by polling your Twitter account every five minutes and sending you push notifications of any new replies or DMs. You grant Boxcar access to your Twitter account via OAuth authorization on Twitter (see Figure 2 above), which means Boxcar never knows your login and password, and you can always revoke the application's authorization by logging into Twitter and navigating to Preferences—>Connections and revoking the applications access to your Twitter account.

If someone simply sent you a message publicly on Twitter, choosing View from the notification launches Boxcar for a split second serving up the Boxcar splashscreen (see Figure 1 above) and then passes you off to either Tweetie or Twitteriffic (support for other popular chat clients like TweetDeck is supposed to be offered in an upcoming update, along with support for multiple Twitter accounts), so that you can see the message or reply to it. Picking which Twitter client to use is one of the options in Settings (see Figure 3 above). 

This is a more elegant solution than what is offered by IM+, as IM+ is really a chat client and not the best way to manage Twitter. When using IM+, I often would receive a Push notification of a Tweet, then I'd have to launch IM+ to dismiss the Push notification so that other newer ones could come through, and then I'd close IM+ and navigate over to Tweetie or TweetDeck to actually respond or view what my other Twitter friends were saying. The auto-routing to Tweetie on Boxcar is actually a time saver, as there's a unified experience. The only thing that is a bit odd, but which is expected since it is a separate program, is that when Tweetie launches it doesn't take you directly to your mentions / replies section, but rather drops you directly into the normal timeline.

  

Figures 4, 5, & 6: Boxcar Push notification from a DM, DM conversation screen, & Notifications settings for Boxcar under Settings

If you receive a Direct Message and you choose View (see Figure 4 above), Boxcar will actually launch into a DM panel where you can see all of your DMs and actually reply to the DM you just received (see Figure 5 above). Although this seems counterintuitive to the way mention notifications are passed off from Boxcar to another application, it does keep the really private DMs private, tucked away in Boxcar. That being said, this is the one feature on Boxcar that seems to be a little buggy right now. The application has crashed on us 3 times so far and each time it has crashed it has been either when we were attempting to send a DM in reply to someone or just after sending a DM. It is a 1.0 release, so most likely these bugs will be addressed in future versions, but we also hope that there is a preference added to route DMs to the Twitter client of our choice, just as there is with mentions.

If you ever need to turn off Boxcar's push notifications (like when you go to sleep at night), you can either launch Boxcar, navigate to Preferences (Figure 3 above), and toggle DMs and Mentions into the off position, or you can navigate to Settings—>Notifications on your iPhone or iPod touch and turn off all of Boxcar's notifications, or go one level deeper to Boxcar's options (Figure 6 above) and toggle off all or some of the notification options. If you do turn off the notifications via the system wide Settings, then when you toggle the setting back on, the latest of the Tweets you received during the period you had the service turned off will appear. 

What's missing and what we'd like to see in future versions?

The key thing missing from Boxcar is support for more Twitter clients and a preference to route DM notifications to the Twitter client rather than always straight to Boxcar. 

Obsessable Recommendations

If you have a favorite iPhone Twitter client and it's one of the two that Boxcar currently supports and you've been dying for a Push notification service for Twitter, then Boxcar will probably be a good choice for you. Once the application is set up, you don't really have to ever use it again except when it pops itself up, so it doesn't need prominent placement on your iPhone's screen. If your favorite Twitter application isn't currently supported, then you should probably wait to get Boxcar until that application is supported. The big question is: how long before some of these other applications come along with their own Twitter Push notification support. Whenever that happens, Boxcar is either going to become unnecessary, or it will have to evolve into a fully featured Twitter client to challenge the current reigning Twitter apps for the iPhone.

Obsessable Rating: 7 out of 10*

*based on testing on 16GB iPhone 3GS

GIVEAWAY: We have a nice handful of Boxcar licenses to give away, thanks to appremix, so make sure you follow us on Twitter: Obsessable. Beginning next week we will randomly send out a Twitter message about licenses being available. The first person to reply to our message will receive a DM with a license code that you can enter into the Redeem section of iTunes and via which you can download a free copy of Boxcar.