Have always loved Androids notification system and quite pleased Apple integrated their own look-a-like. Nothing wrong with taking good ideas from the scene and implementing it their own way. I suspect Google Music will have a bit of catchup to make up for with the iTunes Match.
Yup, notifications look viable now. I barely grasp the notion, having shut off almost all notifications from sheer annoyance.
And Match will be hard to match. Google and Amazon addressed the “put your tunes in the cloud” issue by ignoring publishers; Apple asked nicely and wrote some big checks, so now syncing music libraries is a matter of minutes, not weeks. Amazon will be hard-pressed to ask publishers “ok, can we make arrangements like Apple’s?” after blowing ‘em off before.
Gotta love competition. Apple just made major steps to keep pace with android. W/O android, we would not be seeing several of these updates. The new free MobileMe features is a google equalizer too. we all will have better products with this growing rivalry.