Notifications as the Interface

Mat Honan:

Interactive notifications will spur all sorts of new behaviors. (And yes, Android already has interactive notifications, but the ones in iOS 8 look to go beyond what KitKat can do.) Some of these will be simple, like the ability to reply to an email or text message. But they’re powerful in that you can do this without quitting whatever you’re already doing. And this interactivity is not just limited to system apps. Third-party developers can take advantage of this new capability as well, so you could comment on something on Facebook, respond to a tweet, or even check in on Foursquare. But others are going to be radical, stuff we haven’t imagined yet. Once developers begin to really harness what interactive notifications can do in iOS 8 — and they will — it’s going to cause one of the most radical changes since third-party apps. With the advent of iOS 8, notifications are the new interface frontier.

Remember document-centric computing? OpenDoc from Apple, and OLE from Microsoft? That never took hold because documents themselves have become less relevant. Notification-centric computing though, that sounds good to me. The big difference is that document-centric computing was a replacement for app-centric computing; notification-centric computing goes hand-in-hand with app-centric computing. Use the full app for big things; use the interactive notification for quick things.

★ Friday, 6 June 2014