I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS originally because of my frustration with the push notifications doing stupid things like covering up the controls on a phone call to prevent me from hanging up (imagine trying to make a phone call on the thing, after all!).  However, there were problems with doing it that way, not the least of which was Apple plugging up the security hole that allowed an untethered jailbreak in the first place.  Downgrading the iOS seemed to make it more unstable (for reasons I never figured out).  The last straw, though, was the inability to answer Skype calls while the phone was locked and Notified was running.

So, improved notifications was the major feature I desired when I learned iOS 5 was finally released.  And, it turns out to be a major improvement in this area.  Alerts happen up in the status area unless the phone is locked, and even then they aren’t modal dialogs.  The one strange exception seemed to be the location service which wanted me to turn on wi-fi after I had turned it off because I was going to be on the road.  I don’t understand why it would want wi-fi turned on, as IP addresses have very little to do with location (a proxy or VPN server would mangle it even if it were).