Apple hires jailbreak app developer who fixed crummy iOS notifications

Living the dream of many an (unauthorized) app developer, Peter Hajas has been hired by Apple after developing replacement notification software for jailbroken iOS devices, MobileCrunch reports.

Hajas’ MobileNotifier app replaces the annoying pop-up notifications for jailbroken iPhones with unintrusive alerts. It’s the sort of feature that drives many users to jailbreak their iOS devices — now it seems even Apple is taking notice of interesting contributions from jailbreak app developers.

Apple is expected to announce a revamped notification system for iOS 5 at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, and we can assume Hajas is working on that project. Among his employers on Facebook, Hajas lists Apple and notes he’s been an intern there since May. MobileCrunch notes that Apple generally brings on new developers as interns to test them out.

Last year Apple poached WebOS developer Rich Dellinger, who spearheaded that platform’s gorgeous notification system. There’s been no word on his work since he joined the company, but I suspect we’ll see a similarly pretty and unintrusive notification system come to iOS 5. It’s worth noting that Android has also had an easy-to-use notification system for some time — Apple clearly has some catching up to do.

Check out a demonstration of the latest version of MobileNotifier below.

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