Mac OS X Lion adds iOS style notifications to Dock icons
Feb 28, 2011 - 20 Comments
Mac OS X Lion includes more iOS style notifications on apps Dock icons. In this screenshot you can see them on the iChat app, showing how many unread messages are available.
There are a lot of neat features appearing in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion (at least in the Developer Preview), and although some people are decrying the iOS-ification of OS X, there are some features that are undeniably useful regardless of the platform. I really like the iOS style notifications and they work really well in Mac OS X as evidenced by the enabling the options in the official Twitter for Mac client, so for me it’s great to see Apple adopt this with more apps.
Thanks to FB for the screenshot!
Just upgraded to Lion and I immediately noticed the problem with the unread count badge – it looks much worse than in 10.6 (it is basically unreadable). Seems like the appearance was designed for a retina display (which I obviously don’t have on my MBP).
It looks unreadable in smaller scales because a badge is changing its size with an icon. But in the end dock icon isn’t smaller then e.g. 40px and badge icon is unreadable… its really horrible and unfortunately last 10.7.1 update didn’t change it.. :(
OS X Lion is improved in that the incoming mail sound now works consistently. However, one slight bug. Badge indicator (red outlined number on mail in dock) only works when set in preferences to “all mailboxes”. When set to “incoming mail only” the badge indicator does not function. Oh, well. Can’t have everything.
The badge alerts in my lion dock are awful looking – I have a lot of items in my docks and so when small you can hardly read whats inside the circles! (compared to how they used to be)
Agreed, the unread mail badge has been rendered unreadable.
Surprisingly people point out something new but it is not really new for Lion OS rather unique feature that I personally find very and very impress and useful:
1. LaunchPad (although still buggy on beta as expected)
2. Folders like iOS 4 (although still figuring out how to categorize application as it available to select on finder under application category.)
3. FullScreen with swiping option. (my favorite)
4. User Account log in at upper right conner.
5. Mail interface alike iPad’s : This is my most favorite feature. It’s so nice and love you Apple Mail :)
Those are all I found amazing features so far. All we wait is bugs free fix. :)
Badges for Mail and iChat have always been there. However:
1. The badges UI has been updated to look more like iOS
2. The badges are now apparently system-wide.
This screenshot shows nothing new. This functionality is currently available for both iChat and Mail in Snow Leopard and has been there since 10.0 for Mail and 10.5 for iChat.
in Mail yes, but in iChat there are no badges until Lion
Well that’s a lie isn’t it.
The badges also show up on Xcode for listing the number of errors found when compiling.
OS X does these notifications already for Mail, what’s new?
the notifications on iChat are new
poster doesn’t show it but they are in Safari and most other apps
The notifications are not new at all. Both ichat and mail do that currently.
LaunchPad is interesting, and is far better than simply dragging your applications folder to the Dock.
The ability to organise your applications into Groups (folders), without affecting their physical location in the file system will make it much easier to navigate to the applications that you want.
“…some people are decrying the iOS-ification of OS X…”
But it’s an amazingly smart move on Apple’s part. The iPhone has long had a halo effect for the Mac, and blending the two closer together makes for a more cohesive experience. I think that, ultimately, this is going to make people feel a lot more comfortable jumping to a Mac from a PC (especially in conjunction with Migration Assistant’s addition of a “move from a PC” option).
This isn’t even remotely new. My mail app has a badge right now, and I’m on snow leopard. Come to think of it, they were there in leopard, too.
“Launchpad is still buggy.”. It’s a Developer Preview….
Launchpad is still buggy.
there’s a lot of good in iOS, although things like Launchpad make no sense to me. to each their own eh?