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by mft_ 1683 days ago
I think it’s worse than that. IIRC I had the second model of Android phone ever released in the UK, and even that phone’s notification system was superior to iOS of 2021.

I’ve always assumed patents are to blame - I mean, surely no one at Apple uses their iOS notifications and thinks “yes, that system is perfect in every way”? There must be other factors at work?
1 comments
josephg 1683 days ago
Can you elaborate? I have an iPhone and notifications seem fine. But I’m probably missing something. I haven’t had an android phone in nearly a decade. What do android notifications do differently and better?
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mft_ 1683 days ago
From memory (my last use of Android it was a long time ago!) it was a combination of two factors:

1) Android's system relied on icons appearing on the bar at the top of the screen (e.g. a mail icon for mail, or a message icon for a text, etc.) - which was both unintrusive, and very quick and practical to check. To check a message, you'd just pull down the menu from that bar, and you'd see your different notifications in more detail, most recent first, and a tap would take you to the app. It was a lovely holistic concept. In contrast, iOS has some aspects of this, but it's not holistic:

* Red dots on icons indicate waiting content, but don't reflect when the content is from (unless you're obsessed with clearing all of your red dots - which would be a problem in itself)

* The notification center offers a list of notifications, but it's not linked to a visual reminder - you have to remember to check it.

* The notification center is shown on the lock screen, but IME it's buggy, not always responsive, and sometimes disappears confusingly.

* There are also banners which pop up (and there used to be alerts?) but these aren't connected with the other approaches.

TL;DR: Android had a single holistic approach; iOS has a variety of apparently unrelated approaches.

2) When you're using your phone or computer (it happens on MacOS too) many of Apple's notifications distract you and demand your attention or action. This would include banners which hang around obstructing part of your screen and need a swipe to remove them, or alerts which must be interacted with before you can do anything else. I find this a fundamentally user-unfriendly paradigm.

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