How Apple stole notifications from Android and beat them with iOS 5

By on Jun 13, 2011 at 1:35 PM
Opinions June 13, 2011

If you haven’t seen the pattern before, well, you just haven’t been looking — Apple might not be the first with a feature all of the time, but the company almost always has the last laugh. Remember what happened with copy and paste? It’s almost unimaginable to think that the iPhone didn’t have this feature until almost three years into its existence, but when Apple introduced it, it worked like nothing before it — and by that, I mean it worked, and worked effortlessly. Notifications were arguably the biggest pain point for most iOS users, and Apple, as you know, has addressed them in a big way with Notification Center. How do you access Notification Center? You simply swipe down from the top of the device and a drawer-like panel slides down and displays your notifications. It sounds familiar, yes, but it’s really so much more than what we’ve seen in Android so far. Hit the jump to read on.

How does this differ from Android? Well, for starters, Android populates your status bar at the top of the device with the icon of the app from which you received a notification, and when you run out of screen space, it hides the rest. To see your actual notifications, you pull down the notification pane, and they are listed in there in order from newest to oldest. And you have zero control over those notifications. All you can do is clear them all, or tap them one by one, which brings you into the app that notified you, until they are all clear. You can’t prioritize, choose the sort order, determine what apps you want to actually be in that drawer — nothing.

Beyond Apple’s superior Notification Center UI and the great widget support, initially for weather forecasts and a real-time stock ticker, the company that usually doesn’t give users such fine grain control completely delivers this time. Notification Center lets you chose not only the order in which your notifications are sorted, but also how many notifications from each app you’d like to display (either 1, 5, or 10), and whether or not they appear on the lock screen.

This alone is invaluable — while I get a tiny icon in the status bar in Android letting me know I have a new email, with iOS I can now see a preview of that message along with others. Additionally, I can swipe a particular notification and be directly taken to that individual message or alert right from the lock screen. You can also clear just a specific notification in Notification Center as well, which actually makes my workflow much easier since I rely on calendar events to run my life, and I can leave that calendar notification in the drawer even past the meeting time to remind me of something I need to follow up on.

When you get a notification and are in an app, the top part of the screen will flip down like a number on an old analog alarm clock, displaying your notification. After a few seconds, it will flip back up to reveal the rest of the screen. This also is another place where Android hasn’t innovated, as getting a notification on an Android phone simply displays the icon in the top status bar, but doesn’t give you a preview of that message for all apps, just certain ones. Apple certainly took the drawer concept from Android, but as it has done with countless other features, the company implemented it better than anyone else. Apple didn’t borrow it from Android… Apple stole it, which is why the implementation is as good as it is. If Apple borrowed it, we’d all just have a drawer stuffed full of dirty socks. And notifications.

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  • Kimmy

    I couldn’t care less “who was first, second, third” with an great idea.

    I’ll would LOVE to find a device… that took 10 different great ideas… from each of 20 different devices… and put all 200 features into *ONE* product…. implemented brilliantly.   It’s up to the COMPANIES to fight-out “but we were first”.  I have no idea “who was first” or “who hold the patent”…. nor do I care.

    …. I care about the *PRODUCT* I buy instead.

  • http://profiles.google.com/risingred127 Rising Red

    We’ll wait for Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich and all the new features it will bring. Then we’ll see which Android features Apple accuses as being copied.

  • Tired of Fanboyism

    The writers at BGR make me sick.

  • androidsux4life

    and this once again proves that all apple ever does is steal ideas and repackage them. apple is the carlos mencia of the tech world. and they both suck testicles. 

  • Ethan021

    Problem, android?

  • http://www.facebook.com/logan.ny Logan del Sol

    I’m able to clear notifications one-by-one in Android by swiping to the right. 
    Does this not work for everyone?

  • Anonymous

    My favorite line of all in this fanboy article is: “the great widget support, initially for weather forecasts and a real-time stock ticker.” The “great” widget support? That only supports weather forecasts and a stock ticker? In an article that focuses on how Apple stole some ideas from Android and then made them better than Android, I would not be bringing up “widget support” and “great” in the same sentence.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mac-Jt/1441227226 Mac Jt

    He shamelessly accepts that Apple STOLE the notifications swipe concept from Android and then added some idiotic “enhancements” and somehow thats genius! Wow.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mac-Jt/1441227226 Mac Jt

    He shamelessly accepts that Apple STOLE the notifications swipe concept from Android and then added some idiotic “enhancements” and somehow thats genius! Wow.

  • Laxman2586

    Actually… You can choose which apps give you notifications in Android… In the app’s settings. And you can clear them without looking at them with a simple swipe gesture across the screen.

  • Kevin Olson

    I ended up buying a dev account. I have some dev spots left if any one wants to register their device and try ios 5.  $7 iosdevaccess at gmail dot com

  • http://twitter.com/Dreys Matt Duff

    As a consumer, I could care less who has bragging rights to coming up with a feature first.  I care what functionality a phone has when it comes time for me to buy one.

    The point is, it doesn’t matter who comes up with something first.  It matters who has the best product when it’s time to buy a new phone.

  • 乃亜 印場

    Which would be great, except…
    When Apple copies stuff from other people, (Google, etc.) it’s ok. 
    When Apple doesn’t like someone, they accuse them of copying and try to sue them. (ahem, Samsung).

    they really can’t have it both ways in the long run.

  • http://twitter.com/illizit Caesar Engroba

    LOL, you clearly are an apple fanboy. Let me help you out here: first, Android does ALL of the above except for the “prioritizing” big woop. It DOES show you a preview of the message without even dropping down the notification tray as it scrolls the message at the top. LOL @ Apple copying features (as they always do). Can’t wait when all my Apple friends say “look what Apple did” and then I respond with.. I had this 3 years ago.

  • Anonymous

    good artists borrow.. great artists steal…

    PS, I think your timeline on the release of copy and paste is wrong.. it was a little more like.. 1 year and 9 months.. (but still.. c’mon! I scratched my first iphone with a god damn pencil I had to keep in my pocket for tracking numbers.. )

    The greatest thing about iphone users: they bitch a LOT, where it counts, DIRECTLY AT APPLE… Those of you who think hard core apple users are content with what they have regardless of shortcomings should visit apple forums where there is no lack of bitching, griping, pleading, and generally WTF’n about..

    The greatest thing about apple: they listen.  This notifications thing is a perfect example.. They certainly don’t have their head in the sand.. but, they release no wine before its time..

    So, in general responce to the phandroids phavorite phrase.. Get off
    googles d*ck, gripe, bitch, and moan until the glaring issues with
    android are addressed.. we still see unaddressed issues in google forums
    from 2 years ago!

  • http://twitter.com/bigslam123 Jonathan Youngson

    You wont think the notification bar setup is all that great when you use an app or game that requires swipe motions. Try playing Fruit Ninja and then see if you dont change your mind. The notification bar constantly mucks up the game play by being unintentionally pulled down. At least it gets deactivated during gameplay on Android.

  • Lbjr08

    So iOS 5 turns iphones into Androids! Nice!

  • Lbjr08

    So iOS 5 turns iphones into Androids! Nice!

  • http://twitter.com/MrYuzhai *Certified_geek

    i dont see what the big deal is.. anyways.. welcome to the party apple.. you’re only a few years late compared to our other guests.. o_0

  • guest

    apple copied the notifications from some cydia apps not android they even hired 1 of the guys who made the app for cydia 

  • Danny

    Obviously you haven’t seen the Honeycomb notification bar, we get a pop up in the lower right where the notification bar is, we can selectivly remove them, we can also toggle air plane mode, screen rotation and notifications.
    Also, Sid you say Widgets? Ahahahahahahah.
    To refute what your going to say about honeycomb being tablet only, go google android icecream sandwich.
    Down with the turtlenecked one.

  • General-t W

    “You can’t prioritize, choose the sort order, determine what apps you want to actually be in that drawer — nothing.”dude its an android is open source you can personalize everything you can change the hole UI to satisfy your needs you can install ios on it if you want to (not that anyone in their sane mind would) and it will run better.

  • Lovemydroid

    Yeah lets just see what ics has offer before we all praise ios

  • Chaser493

    you are an idiot although apple did improve IN few areas this was something they just stole from android and said “Hey look at me im apple we kick ass and made a notification bar thats been on android for eighty FREAKING YEARS! So yall pay out your but for this shizy phone that android keeps topping off every other day!” money whores. pfff what a looser

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000543739413 Scot Milo

    great article! Lets just hope the Android Fan boys don’t come trolling in..

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