If you’ve used an iOS device and an Android one, you’ll know that iOS 4’s notifications and multitasking are horrible in comparison to Android’s.
These features are so bad, I wonder how they even got released by a company so dedicated to user experience. So, check out this take on what iOS notifications should be, namely MobileNotifier.
peterhajas(dot)com – blog – MobileNotifier beta3 – Copious Corn Flakes (h/t MobileCrunch, 9to5 Mac)
If you’ve jailbroken your device, you can have MobileNotifier now. If not, you can wait and hope for an overhaul this good in iOS 5, or jump to Android where your battery runs down quickly, but at least you get real notifications and real multi-tasking.
If you read here, you’ll know I had to issue a mea culpa about the importance of notifications and multitasking to mobile users.
Very true about the notifications. But really this should be OOTB. I still think, for enterprise users at least, that Android has the functionality and the UX for the notifications space, then Blackberry, and Apple not even getting out of the starting blocks. http://userassistance.tumblr.com/
I’ve heard iOS 5 will address the notification system, but I wonder if they will ever really commit to true multitasking bc of the battery drain.
I wonder which option most users would pick: awesome battery life, but poor notifications and crappy app switching or horrible battery life, but great notifications and true multitasking?
Personally I think the multitasking thing is over-rated. Most users won’t use it. From an enterprise perspective Apple needs to solve this. But then the security aspect needs to be addressed too. By the time iOS 5 comes out, who knows? What interests me from research perspective is that in the enterprise space pretty much the notification experience is still a message or badging experience, with actions performed directly off the notification itself (i.e. click on it). Users don’t want to get into the whole audio, vibrate thing, or even respond through SMS…
I used to think that too 🙂 It’s something you take for granted on Android though, e.g. when I’m playing Angry Birds, and I switch away to read an @ reply or watch a level walkthrough, I have to restart the entire game. It’s highly annoying that the app can’t maintain its state.
Android’s notifications are awesome. One place for all your relevant information. IOS badges are a pale comparison. I expect that to change, a la MobileNotifier.