So I loaded iOS 5 Beta 1 onto my iPod Touch and took a look around. I haven’t had much time to fiddle with it but I’ve decided that Apple did a great job of ripping off Android’s notification system and that’s a good thing. With that said Apple did add two things that I greatly appreciate; widgets on the notification pull-down and the ability to make notifications appear on the lock screen.
I’m not sure if Apple is going to allow third parties to write widgets for the pull-down menu but they have included one for stocks and another for weather. When you pull down the notification page the weather widget will give you the current temperature which is nice. Hopefully third parties are allowed to write widgets for the notification page as I could name a few things I’d like to see there.
The other change to the notification system that Apple made was making notifications appear on the lock screen if you want them to. When you turn the phone on any notifications set to appear on the lock screen will be there and swiping across a notification will open the app that sent out the notification. Thus swiping across an e-mail notification will open Mail and take you right to the message you swiped across. Overall I really like the new notification system and feel it makes iOS a far better OS to work with.