Notifications have certainly gotten better since the early days of iOS and while we have some settings tweaks to help you get more out of Notifications, Apple could certainly keep polishing that feature.

User Sentry on The Verge Forums posted some concepts of how to improve Notifications to make them more useful and intuitive. The first concept (which I think is brilliant) brings something that would be a nice, subtle usability improvement—quick reply in messages:

Now to get to the meat of the concept; quick-reply. You might’ve noticed in the above mockups, there’s a compose icon to the far right of the notifications. For any type of messaging app, tapping on that icon will open the banner to reveal a compose sheet;

Sentry then takes on in-app notifications. Something that Apple still forces to the front with the “classic” alert box…

But what about alerts that aren’t tied to a specific app, or configurable from the NC settings? Things like permission requests, low battery alerts, wifi network lists, and so on? Visually, these shouldn’t be the same as app-based notifications. They are alerts, and tied to the OS rather than an app. These kinds of alerts, would look like this

Interesting concepts that could either find their way into iOS 7 (or whatever) or as a jailbreak tweak. One of Sentry’s earlier ideas for a better app switcher is currently being developed, so maybe someone will pick this up as well.

We also have precedent for Apple hiring developers who have created popular jailbreaks in the past with Comex, Jan-Michael Cart, and Peter Hajas all working at Apple on iOS based on their work on jailbreak tweaks.

What do you think of these Notifications ideas? Think the jailbreak community will pick them up?