[dhritzkiv]

I haven't read the new developer documentation, but if it's like the notch of previous years, Apple will recommend that 3rd-party developers don't pay it any heed specifically, and instead rely on the safe area dimensions/constraints provided by the OS in order to control their layouts.

For 3rd party developers to show information in the Island, that will be achieved through the Live Activities API, which is not specific to the iPhone 14 Pro.

The Island will likely stick around for a few years, after which point Apple will adapt that notification area UI to work without the Island.

[Hamuko]

Yeah, I didn't see anything about the Island that seemed to be API-specific to it. Music players will probably get into the Island by just adapting the normal Now Playing APIs that get your media information on the lockscreen, live updates get to the island by adapting the Live Activities API, and so on. Maybe there's some customization that you can do, but I imagine developers don't need to specifically code for it.

And since it's basically baked-in that iPhones will have a front-facing camera, and they don't seem eager to abandon Face ID, I don't see the Island disappearing anytime soon. And even if they get some fancy new tech that allows to hide everything behind the screen without massive compromises, it's still possible for the holepunch design to live on in the non-Pro models and later in the SE models (similar to how Touch ID still exists on the SE).

[darknavi]

They specifically called out having APIs for having "dualing" (two) different streams of notifications so it seems like they are playing at having this sort of UI permanently (or at least near future).

It makes sense to keep an incarnation of this in the future because they explicitly are replacing a few types of built-in UI with the Island.