Hands-on with OS X Mavericks: Notification Center
With the release of OS X Mountain Lion in 2012, Apple brought iOS’s Notification Center feature to the Mac. As with its iOS counterpart, OS X’s Notification Center alerts you when something is happening (or has happened) on your device. On iOS it’s flawed but indispensable; in Mountain Lion I’ve found it to be eminently dispensable.
In recent years, Apple has shown a predilection for improving operating-system features in their second iterations—think Time Machine and FileVault, to name just two. With OS X Mavericks, Apple is doing the same for Notification Center. But while the result is more useful, it still doesn’t feel as organized as it should be.
Interactive bubbles
Notification Center comes in two forms: Floating notification bubbles that appear on your screen when you need to know something, and a notifications list that slides out from the right side of your screen when you click the Notifications icon at the far right side of the menu bar. (The bubbles come in two forms: Banners and Alerts. Banners eventually fade away if you ignore them, while Alerts stay on screen until you act on them.) In a year of using Mountain Lion, I have come to appreciate the floating bubbles, but I’ve rarely, if ever, used the sidebar list.
A notification bubble for an incoming message (top); replying to the message directly within the bubble (bottom).
In Mavericks, those bubbles have become much more useful, mainly because they’re now more interactive. When you receive a message in Messages, for example, you can reply directly from the bubble: Click on the Reply button, and the bubble expands to reveal a text area. Type a reply and press Return to send it.
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