Steven Levy:
A few weeks ago I was crossing the street. It was cold — late February in the Winter From Hell here on the east coast — and I was wearing a heavy coat with an inside pocket for my iPhone. The device buzzed and vibrated. My heart quickened. I ran the remaining few yards to the curb. I pulled off my gloves, fumbled to open the buttons of the coat, and almost dropped my bag in the process. Finally I managed to pull out the phone. On the screen was the following message:
“Braves OF B.J. Upton has changed his name to Melvin”
This was delivered to me in the standard message format, no different than a New York Times alert informing me a building two blocks from my apartment has exploded, or an iChat message that my sister is desperately trying to reach me. Please note that I am not a blood relative of B.J. — sorry, Melvin — Upton, nor am I even a fan of the Atlanta Braves. In other words…this could have waited.
I reflexively deny permission to 99% of the apps that ask to notify me of every stupid little thing so I have less of an issue with this but I do understand where Levy is coming from. One of the things that jumps out at me from some of the Apple Watch reviews is the idea that, if you set it up right, only those notifications that are truly important will be sent on to your wrist. But that’s the way I have my iPhone set up already.
Likewise. I don’t understand why any sane person would do it any other way except for laziness or lack of knowledge. I trim my Facebook and Twitter the same way. Block, mute, flag as not interested. Do this enough and the experience is quite nice. Maybe that is the main problem though, it’s too easy to get out of hand. Should iOS not have automatic popups and instead require all users to explicitly allow by going to the settings app?
I’d love if there was a way for me to reset the notification settings so that every app would have to ask me again. I used to be a lot more permissive about such things; now I get to hunt down apps that bother me.
Edit: It looks like Reset All Settings will do this. It removes a few other things, too, but nothing I think I’ll miss.
I got a notification on my MacBook after installing 10.10.3 yesterday that wanted me to ‘try out Photos’. I have no idea where the notification came from, or how to stop it, and I’m pretty pissed (and not in an Aussie or Brittie kinda way). Apple needs to kindly do something indelicate with marketing notifications.
I predict that soon there’ll be fashionable warm clothes with wrist windows to check notifications on your smartwatch without exposing skin. 🙂
I know where that came from. It came from you updating to 10.10.3. Photos and the new iCloud Photo Library are new major feature of 10.10.3 and 8.3. It’s typical form when you do an upgrade with a new major feature like that for the post update set up screen to call out the feature and ask you to turn it on. Updates have been doing that for ages. You just say no if you don’t want it.