People say that I never say anything bad about the iPhone. Here’s something: its notification system is awful. In particular, I’m talking about the way notifications are managed. They aren’t. Any Push Notification that comes in overrides another one. Apps can get badged with updates, but you’ll have no idea what’s new. That’s why Boxcar is a vital app.

We’ve written about Boxcar a number of times over the past year or so. They’re now launching version 4.0 of the app, and it’s by far the best yet. The entire app has been overhauled from the ground up. The result is a killer management system for Push Notifications. Apple needs to buy this company.

While previous versions of the app gave you a time-ordered stream of your notifications, it was somewhat daunting to look at. And you couldn’t do much from in the app itself. The new design makes everything much easier to manage and more visually appealing. For example, notifications from Twitter now show up complete with the user’s profile picture. And you can retweet or reply to any of those message right from within Boxcar.

The app itself has taken a design cue from the excellent Facebook iPhone app and features a home screen with nice looking big buttons for each service you have activated. There is also now Retina Display support if you have the iPhone 4. All of this works on the iPod touch and iPad as well.

And 4.0 brings Support for a host of new services. Google Buzz, Google Voice, Github, App Recommendations, and a few others are all now included and can be installed with a few easy steps. These App Recommendations are done by Boxcar themselves.

Boxcar is now a team of 5 people based in New York City. To date, they’ve delivered over 500 million notifications to iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

Boxcar is a free download in the App Store (though it’s $4.99 if you wish to disable in-app advertising). You can find it here. Version 4.0 should be live shortly.



