Cleanliness is next to Godlyness

One complain I have about the android OS is how cluttered the notification bar can get.    Here is a screenshot from my nexus one after about 3 hours of not being picked up.

The android notification system has had a pull down notification bar for years.   Any email, txt, or app that is running has access to post something in the notification bar.   What happens over time is apps keep notifying you of stuff, (in this case from left to right, app download, gmail, new news, gmail, facebook, and cyanogenmod).  If you dont constantly keep clearing notifications, it gets cluttered, ugly, annoying and useless.

This pictures is a pulldown of notification bar, again too much stuff!  Also note that toggles for bluetooth, wifi, gps, and sound are all in the notification bar.   A simple press of the clear button will remove all the notifications, but it still annoying how easy it is for apps to get access to the notifications bar.

Here we have a screenshot of the iOS home screen.   Note that the bar up top is not really a notification bar, its more of a status bar.   Notifications pop up and interrupt whatever you are doing.   If your browsing the web and get a txt, it will pop up infront of your browser.  This method i feel is much cleaner, but also much more annoying.    Also note that the email app has 39 emails.
It will be interesting to see how iOS 5 handles the above mentioned problem.