Sam OliverJan-Michael Cart, a student at the University of Georgia and specialist in video and graphic design, was recently hired by Apple as a paid intern for the next seven months. That new addition, as noted by Ars Technica, is the latest in a series of hires that could signal further changes to the iOS Notification Center.
Cart gained fame for a series of Apple-style videos in which he created mockup demos for suggested improvements he would make to the Notification Center user interface. They include a persistent badge in the iPhone status bar showing the number of notifications, third-party widgets, and collapsible lists of notifications.
The hiring of Cart for an internship comes only months after Apple added software programmer Peter Hajas, who created his own notification user interface for jailbroken iPhones known as MobileNotifier. The MobileNotifier application, which was only available on hacked iPhones through the Cydia storefront, was downloaded nearly a quarter-million times.
And a year earlier, Apple bolstered its team by hiring Rich Dellinger, who worked as the user interface design architect at Palm for nearly four years. During his time there, he invented the webOS notification system and co-developed the application framework for the Palm Pre operating system.
Notification Center is one of the hallmark features of the iOS 5 mobile operating system update released by Apple in October. It allows users to replace the intrusive "alerts" that were used for notifications in previous versions of iOS, and replace them with a "banner" notification that appears at the top of the screen. Users can also swipe down from the top of the screen to access the Notification Center and see all of their notifications.
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Unfortunately the demo video does nothing to address Notification Center's biggest shortcoming: that it's app-centric rather than time-centric. If it worked the same way the lock screen notifications do, with notifications sorted by most to least recent rather than grouped by app, it might actually be useful.
For all the flak given to Android, there is no denying that this was taken directly from Android.
Jan-Michael Cart has some excellent ideas that you can see here http://janmichaelcart.com/wp/portfolio-items/536/
I would like to see the following in the next version of iOS:
I like virtually everything Jan-Michael Cart has demonstrated so virtually anything he recommends seems likely to be advantageous
Add movies to iCloud
3D Maps integrated with Siri and including dynamic turn-by-turn navigation (see Placebase, Poly9 and C3 Technologies)
Automatic Settings profiles based on geolocation (Home: Wi-Fi enabled, 3G/4G disabled, low brightness, Bluetooth disabled)
Settings access from any screen (3G/4G data, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, Brightness, Location Services, Usage, Wi-Fi) perhaps in the Notification Center
Settings access via Siri (3G/4G data, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, Brightness, Location Services, Usage, Volume, Wi-Fi)
Siri voice recognition log-in (Me: "Good Morning, Siri" Siri: "Good Morning, MacBook Pro. Logging in for you."
Siri integration iTunes Movie Trailers
Siri integration with many more services such as OpenTable, TaxiMagic, etc. Essentially everything that Apple removed.
Siri API for third party apps (improved Yelp integration, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, Waze, WhatsApp, etc.)I would like improved workflow for the following:
adding contacts (see Evernote Hello and BC Reader)
exchanging contacts (see Bump)
I would like to be able use the Camera to identify a long forgotten acquaintance (search Contacts and perhaps Facebook and Twitter images as well)
improved Weather (see TheWeatherChannel app)
improved Stocks
Improve Ping and add apps, books, movies, TV Shows, websites, etc.
Allow me to customize Ping (ala iWeb?)
Add Photos to Ping
Add "groups" to Ping
Allow me to "Find my Friends" on Ping
Add sports scores and results to Notification Center (UFC!)
For all the flak given to Android, there is no denying that this was taken directly from Android.
Actually there is.
There are only a few limited ways to do notifications in the UI and the Android one, while first, uses the same obvious methods used by iOS. The kicker however is that the same "obvious" methods were also used by Palm before either iOS or Android which was a copy of an almost identical system used in the Newton. So it's sort of a copy, but it wasn't original or non-obvious in the first place and the first original examples of similar systems actually go back to an Apple product.
Also, if you look into the timing, you will see that it would be impossible for Apple to have copied the Android system directly and that they must have had their design almost finished before the Android one even came out. So it's more like parallel development of a very obvious idea than a copy.
So ... the whole meme about how this was "stolen" from Android is really a bunch of BS but it's so widely believed now that it might as well be true for most people.
It's not like the average person even knows about the Newton and of course the study of history (arguably the most important part of any education curriculum), has fallen into disrepute in the last 20 years anyway, so people are generally extra-ignorant nowadays.
Actually there is.
There are only a few limited ways to do notifications in the UI and the Android one, while first, uses the same obvious methods used by iOS. The kicker however is that the same "obvious" methods were also used by Palm before either iOS or Android which was a copy of an almost identical system used in the Newton. So it's sort of a copy, but it wasn't original or non-obvious in the first place and the first original examples of similar systems actually go back to an Apple product.
Also, if you look into the timing, you will see that it would be impossible for Apple to have copied the Android system directly and that they must have had their design almost finished before the Android one even came out. So it's more like parallel development of a very obvious idea than a copy.
So ... the whole meme about how this was "stolen" from Android is really a bunch of BS but it's so widely believed now that it might as well be true for most people.
It's not like the average person even knows about the Newton and of course the study of history (arguably the most important part of any education curriculum), has fallen into disrepute in the last 20 years anyway, so people are generally extra-ignorant nowadays.
WebOS is the best I've seen. I don't use iOS Notifications much on the iPhone, find that it can get in the way, and really hate it on the iPad.
I also wish there was a method for adjusting the brightness without being able to see what's on the screen. I'd make a demo video for my solution if I knew how to create such a video but I have zero skills in that area.