Another Mac feature comes to Windows
One of the coolest Apple OS add-ons is Growl, which various applications use to give you slidey translucent pop up alerts. They look good, are pretty unobtrusive, and generally useful, whether it's notifying you about the track you're listening to on iTunes, or that a download is complete.
Now we have Growl for Windows, still in beta, and it certainly feels like it. The notifications are less attractive, it insists on placing an icon in your system tray (it is invisible in OSX), and it's compatible with only a few applications for which you need to install separate plugins.
Windows isn't an Apple product, and while there have been several attempts to bring Apple style OSX features to Windows, they always feel out of place. Growl needs a lot more work to be something valuable for the Windows user. The Firefox notifications pop up for downloads, but as your task bar will also be flashing, it seems a bit pointless.
Hopefully Growl will improve with future versions, but it's awkward and not very useful at the moment.
Changes
New options give more choice when managing notifications New and improved displays offer more flexibility and choice Subscribe to notifications from the client computer Notification history can be viewed by date or grouped by application Improved UI makes Growl for Windows look much better All included displays now automatically resize to fit their contents New Smokestack display adds more choice to how notifications are displayed Get a summary of notifications you missed while you were away
