Looking for inspiration
There are already two shareware examples of expanded, personal notification systems for Mac OS X: LanOSD and Growl. Apple could learn a lot more from these projects than from Windows!

Its notifications are brutally annoying. Events that are trivial or even completely non-interesting constantly spew from the Windows taskbar with the desperate panic of an inner city emergency room on Halloween, and with all of the sophistication of an AOL chat:

HI I'M WINDOWS XP! I SEE YOU LOGGED IN AS ADMINISTRATOR. I CAN GIVE YOU A REMEDIAL TOUR OF THIS NEW 2001 OPERATING SYSTEM! IF YOU DON"T WANT TO SIT THROUGH THIS INTRO, CLICK ON THIS MICROSCOPIC CLOSE BOX. (dismiss)

I NOTICED YOU HAVE UNUSED ICONS ON YOUR DESKTOP!! LOL!! I CAN HELP YOU MANAGE THIS PROBLEM! HERE IS A WIZARD TO...(dismiss)

WTF, YOU DON'T HAVE AN ANTIVIRUS SUBSCRIPTION AND WELL, U SHOULD KNOW I AM A BIT SLOPPY WITH SECURITY LOL!! LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO PAY FOR ... (dismiss)

THERE ARE UPDATES AVAILABLE! (select update) I WILL NOW UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE! YOU CAN CONTINUE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I'M GOING TO DOWNLOAD THE ... (minimizes self. What? Manually reopen...) I INSTALLED SOMETHING, AND WE HAVE TO RESTART THE PC :P LOL! (select restart later)

HAHA, I NOTICED YOU STILL HAVE UNUSED ICONS ON YOUR DESKTOP!! LOL (dismiss)

WTF I INSTALLED TODAYS SECURITY PATCH, AND WE HAVE TO RESTART THE PC LOL! THIS IS WINDOWS! RESTART NOW OR I WILL POP BACK UP IN 10 MINUTES! HURRY UP I THINK ANOTHER PATCH DOWNLOAD IS ON THE WAY! (restart)

So please Apple, provide something akin to Growl's notification system in Leopard, along with performance monitoring, remote logging and software event alerting. While some of these features have more obvious applications in a server environment, including them in Leopard will bring sophisticated notification and monitoring into the Mac OS X mainstream.

This will not only provide casual users with powerful enabling technologies, but will also create a larger user base for features Apple can resell to their server customers as proven and field tested.

Notification services
- expanded bezel icons that provide simple visual cues
- verbose notification panels that subtlety and passively provide more detailed information
- customizable sound cues, integrated with VoiceOver, system alerts and sound effects
- centrally customized notification priority
- remote event notification via email, IM, SMS, or pager (hey why not even by fax)
- remote logging of notification events to a central syslog server

Hardware performance monitoring
- remote reporting through notification services
- performance log reporting
- hardware utilization reporting
- hardware failure reporting

Software process and service monitoring
- remote error reporting through notification services
- service monitoring and error reporting
- software security alerts
- task completion alerts

• iPods and Mobile Devices
• Open Source and Development
• Wishlists and Product Concepts
• Product Reviews and Comparisons
• Unraveling Tech Myths
• Deconstructing Tech Analysts and FUD
• All Articles
• Hide Article List