iPad Pet Peeve: Notifications
Last weekend, Jake showed off a pretty great little program for my iPad: Noteshelf. After using it on his iPad for a few minutes, it all clicked, and I ran out to get a stylus for my iPad. Since, my iPad has replaced my collection of pens and Moleskines – if you know me at all, you know that’s a Big Deal.
What this means is that I’ve been using the iPad a lot more, especially at work. That also means that the little annoyances of the iPad are really starting to irk me. The first one, and the biggest one for me, is the Notifications system.
I’m used to Android. I love Android. When I get an alert on Android, I get an icon in the status bar, and in some cases, I get a little ticker with a blurb of info about the alert - the sender of an email, the first few lines of a Google Voice message. The Android team has a great new page on the Notifications system for Android as part of their new Android Design developer portal. In short, I love the way Android does notifications, and in my opinion, it’s one of the key plusses about Android when compared to iOS.
On the iPad? Apple’s trying - the new Notifications Center works well, and the idea of shuffling off the alerts to Somewhere Else obviously apes Android. But, take a look at the Notifications Center page again, specifically this section of the screenshot, showing a notification alert:
Do you see the problem I have with that implementation? Compare it to the notification ticker on Android 4.0:
The notification alert covers up UI elements that I interact with!
The biggest problem is when I’m using Safari, but it also happens quite a bit with Noteshelf: I’ll reach up to interact with the application and, as my finger or stylus is moving, I’ll get an alert. Instead of tapping in the address bar, or hitting the UI element I want to interact with, I’m now shuffled off to the application sending the alert, since I tapped on the alert instead of what I was planning on touching moments before.
Today, in a meeting, I actually dropped a couple of curses twice, when I was tossed off to Mail without wanting to.
Notifications suck. I might just turn them off entirely.
