iOS 5 notifications.....what you need to know

Some of the biggest changes in Apple's iOS 5 were unveiled as a welcome overhaul to the iOS's simple notification system. As it stands right now, new alerts pop up in a dialog box that interrupts whatever yuo may be doing. Then if you receive multiple alerts while your device is locked, you have to dismiss each one of them separately, but you can only see one alert per app; if you receive five text messages, you’ll only be alerted to one rather than all 5 and it can be frustrating.  Then if you unlock your phone quickly before you read an alert, and only notice at the end of your swipe, you're S.O.L because it won't come up again.   And sometimes, swiping to unlock your phone just as a notification appeared means that you’ll unintentionally launch the alerting app and that too is infuriating.


Not the iOS 5 introduces a new and far more improved Notifications Center. This is now accessible at any time, from any app, with a single swipe straight down from the top of your device. Notifications Center displays your received alerts, organized by app and timestamped. Tap on a specific notification, and you’re taken directly to the right place in the appropriate app. Notifications Center alone solves the problem of dealing with stacked alerts; it’s easy to swipe through a list of all your received notifications.


When new notifications arrive, you’ll see a temporary, floating banner at the top of the screen—it looks a lot like Game Center notifications you may have encountered and loved.  Of course, those floating banners are a bit easier to miss if you’ve glanced away from the screen or are deeply engrossed in your app, but then again since each new alert gets saved in your Notifications Center, it’s painless to check and ensure you’re caught up with what's happening out in the world.


You can clear out old notifications manually. There’s a small X associated with each app listed in Notifications Center. When you tap it, it turns into the word Clear; tap that, and you remove all of the app’s old notifications. Old notifications aren’t removed automatically - though that seems like some sort of sentiment that might need a “yet” attached.  Don’t be surprised with iOS 5’s release, developers can leverage an API to indicate when you’ve clearly processed the data from a notification (e.g., viewed your friend’s play in Words With Friends), thus removing the notification automatically saving you that extra step.


Now if you go to the Settings app, you can choose how your notifications are organized and sorted. If you sort by time, the apps with the most recent alerts appear at the top of Notifications Center. If you choose Manual sort instead, you that can determine (still in the Settings app) the order in which apps will appear and set up which is more important to you.


Even though the “old” notifications approach was loved by no one, the modal box did have its merits in certain cases. If you’d prefer that some alerts continue to pop up the familiar box, you can still configure how apps’ notifications appear on an app-by-app basis, this again is from within the Settings app. That way, you can re-enable the modal box for, say, text messages or VM, if you prefer that those alerts be more prominent.  I personally why anyone would, but that have left that door open for anyone who would want to.


iOS 5 also revamped the lock screen.   Now you notifications that arrive, while your device is locked, will stack up vertically on the lock screen, with the newest alerts listed first and you can scroll through them before swiping to the right to unlock your iPhone. While Notifications Center organizes alerts by app, the lock screen merely sorts them by time. 


While systemwide alert sounds - like the New Mail or Calendar alerts - are a different class of iOS notification entirely, they too score with an update from iOS 5. For the first time, you can now customize which built-in sound your devices use for alerts like those, so you now can have any sound from your built-ins to a customized sound you want letting you know of a New E-mail or Calendar alert.  I personly grabbed on of the wav files from the old AOL system and my iPhone says "Youve Got Mail"  .


With iOS5 being released only a few of days ago, there is definately a lot of positive buzz about it.  From my perspective I find it a definate win for Apple!