You picked a particularly timely example, as just this morning I set Lyft to "notify me about ride stuff" and "absolutely do not ever again tell me I have a credit".
It does feel cultural. If Apple can't get this right, then it points to a cultural blind spot for all of tech. Humans are not computers--we don't multi-task. And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable.
They have a lot of things they are good about, but productivity usually gets sacrificed at the altar of simplicity, or a prettier look.
If you look at how the Mac productivity apps have changed, every one of them has moved from being productivity focused to being more about the design and looks. The obvious examples are Mail and Calendar (although Mail has been decent about bringing back some of the features it lost). Contacts/Address Book has always been a terrible app, and the iWork suite of apps also took a disastrous turn towards simplicity where they ended up losing a lot of functionality.
What used to be really great about the Mac OS ecosystem was the plethora of productivity focused app makers, who also had a great sense of design. When it came to productivity on the Mac (or any platform, for that matter), the real strides came from 3rd party Mac developers.
I don't think it's so much a blind spot as a deliberate disempowerment of the user.
If we actually had general purpose computing devices with operating systems designed to empower users with the ability to manage complex flows of data in both meaningful and aesthetic ways, the 'tech' market as we know it would collapse.
Cars have become computers, computers have become devices, and devices have become advertising nodes. Nodes are interested in invisible collection of data about the user, not aiding users in benefiting and sorting through the data generated.
>> And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable.
So much this. We originally created these machines to automate repetitive tasks, but somewhere along the way we switched paradigms and now they force us to engage in repetitive tasks.
My kids have had their lives documented on social media in greater detail than I ever did with the old family albums.
Hopefully they aren't too upset with the results.
android now has silent notifications. they appear in the bar but dont interrupt you. you can choose alert me or silent or none. its a much better paradigm.
I know we're talking past each other, or our use cases are different, because to that I reply, "duh, that's kind of the idea." :-)
Does this mean that notifications dont vibrate my phone when it is unlocked and Im using it?
If I can get that information reliably enough, I could use Automator on OS X to enable Do Not Disturb until a couple minutes after I task switch to anything else that's not focus-based.
It also allows you to set up "Do not disturb" on slack during your focus and meeting time. It's awesome.
(BTW, no personal association with the company, just a happy user).
But to find this setting basically requires traversing every node in the settings tree, not following common sense. The Privacy subtitle in particular (“choose what data you share with us”) is especially misleading, since it makes it seem that that the Privacy Settings are only about controlling what data you share with Lyft.
It’s underhanded crap like this that shows me Lyft is no better than Uber. They’re both mercenary, deceptive companies willing to do anything for an extra buck.
If this weren't the case, we'd be able to use a single channel for all of our notifications, but every time a channel gets overridden by spam, we're forced to shift to less noisy channels as our primary focus of attention. Rinse and repeat.
Hopefully we're able to establish and enforce meaningful cultural norms surrounding the exploitation of these channels and demand simple sophisticated granular filtering mechanisms before we adopt intensely immersive and liminal technologies which ultimately encase the entirety of our existence in a cacophonous chamber of commercial cadjoling.
'Notification' sounds so nice and subtle, but most of the time it is actually an unnecessary diversion, that would be better categorized as an 'interruption'.
Plugging in a charger sounds the same as receiving a text message sounds the same as an email arriving.
It's kind of empowering to receive a message and know if I even need to look at my wrist or not (let alone actually bring out my phone). Makes me feel like a cyborg.
Do I want my meeting interrupted if my spouse calls with an emergency? Absolutely.
Do I want that meeting interrupted to find out I've been given a $10 Lyft credit? Absolutely not.
That Lyft credit, thank you, can be delivered to the proper home for notifications: my email.