Oh, gods, yes. Google Maps has become infuriating lately. I'm interacting with it because I'm trying to get somewhere, often in a hurry or while sitting at a red light or something, and it's popping up random questions that have nothing to do with me. Maps has become a perfect storm of bad timing and inappropriately intrusive behavior.

I assumed it was that way for me because I actually answered a question once or twice, and Google was predictable acting like a stray dog that had been given a full cheeseburger.

I have never answered any of the questions myself, and it begs just as shamelessly. Came with the phone and can't be removed. I suppose I should be thankful I can at least disable its notifications. I really do not comprehend what the thinking is behind various apps being preloaded on a phone and then straight up not being removable. Like... I can't uninstall Facebook? Really? Who thought it was a good idea to have a 'disable' but no 'uninstall' option? I just don't get it.

I actually heard a good reason for that here the other day. The customized OS portion of Android is on a different, read-only partition, and it's not writable except during reboot on upgrade (or something like that, I'm butchering it from memory I'm sure).

Upgrades can be applied from the application/user data partition, but they stay on the user data side and that's why the best you can do is to uninstall upgrades and disable. Apparently most the providers have gotten better about only including an application stub now that doesn't include the app binaey/data, so usually uninstalling upgrades leaves you with a ~12kb application stub/placeholder.

Now Google Pay is doing the same stuff.

"Hey, did you know the store across the road from you right now accepts Google Pay?"

No shit. 99% of Australian stores accept it since it works just like a credit card.

At least google maps has their notifications grouped in a sane way.

That's not Android nagging at an OS level, that's an app you've chosen to use and to which you've chosen to login.

On my phone I receive status-bar notifications a for: new personal e-mail, RSS updates for specific topics, F-droid updates, battery level, storage space critical. The latter two are the only OS notifications I can't seem to suppress.

It doesn't matter that they're not at the os level, they're notifications you'll get on an Android phone as delivered straight from the factory.

I think they should call it 'tech-savvy mode' for users who value concentration, hate distraction, etc.

After all the majority of public (which the sales are aimed at) will enjoy those notifications.

But, software engineering folks who have 'rubbed over' UI's for years time, will probably hate

If the app is built into the OS and considered an essential - its part of the operating system.