Two Questions About Notifications in iOS 5
06 June 2011 Apple announced lots of fun stuff today. One of the most welcome features was a totally revamped notification scheme (42:30 in the aforelinked video) for iOS. FINALLY. It's clearly a rip on Android, which isn't a bad thing—Android's notifications are damn good. But I have two questions about it…
1. Are there any apps for which a downward swipe from the top has a significant function which would be obviated by activating the new system-wide Notifications Center? Games would seem to be especially susceptible to this.
2. Notification Center looks great, but it seems like there should be a way to see how many unread / existing notifications there are without having to invoke it. Not only would this help users manage their notifications, but it would give them a UI to know that Notification Center exists. As it stands, the UI is completely invisible if you don't know it's there, and if you invoke it accidentally (because you don't know it's there), it could be quite jarring.
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