Live data from Hacker News

Apple News has a notification spam problem

matthewcassinelli.com

41–50 of 71 posts

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not above sleazy tricks like this. They have also had ‘bugs’ where they silently turned off the ‘Limit ad tracking’ setting automatically.

Also if you're an iTunes Match user and don't subscribe to Apple music you now have to skip past an Apple Music advert every so often when you open the Music app. Not sure if it's once a month or once an update but I've had it twice so far. Not to mention having to delay an update notification daily on my Mac. This is the sort of behavior that any other big 4 would be dragged over the coals for.

> Not to mention having to delay an update notification daily on my Mac.

I don't understand this. Windows is "dragged over the coals" for forcing updates at the worst times. Why? Because no one ever updates willingly, the update just gets kicked down the line until finally the system forces it.

You have two options for osx:

* Complain about update notifications and never change your attitude or flow. Continue to gripe on forums instead.

* Understand that updates are generally good, and run the updates in the morning before you start working, or at a more convenient time.

I only push back updates about 2-3 days if I forget, but it's not that hard to just update and get it over with.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#42

This is something I had noticed as well. Its really surprising that Apple would allow this, since they usually care a lot about user experience. And judging by the amount of notifications - I'd be very surprised if there's anyone left who hasn't turned on notifications for the news app. I wonder why they wouldn't just compile a Morning and Evening digest and send notifications only then (even that would be aggressive…

>Its really surprising that Apple would allow this, since they usually care a lot about user experience.

They stopped caring about that long ago. Look at the experience of the Marzipan apps they shipped. Look at the bug rates of their software lately. Look at the experience of their laptop keyboards. Look at the matrix you have to check to figure out which model of Apple Pencil works with which model of iPad. Look at the port and dongle situation with their laptops. Look at the age of the Mac Pro they're selling for full price.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#43
This is a problem - I was getting 10-30 notifications a day - I've just switched off notifications for this app.

It's a shame, as I'd like to be notified if some proper breaking news of significance actually happens. One of my notifications for instance was on Princess Eugenie's 29th birthday.

I have zero interest in lifestyle stories, let alone those of the royalty - it is utter spam.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is the default behavior of Apple News and is poor design. It doesn't even align with Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines[0], which states "If you send multiple notifications for the same thing, you fill up Notification Center, and users may turn off notifications from your app." [0]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

> The problem is that this is the default behavior of Apple News This is not the default behaviour. No application has permission to send you notifications unless you enable it.

That's not true for Apple's own apps. News can send notifications without you enabling them (like you have to for 3rd party apps). I've even submitted a bug report about this and it was closed as "working as intended".

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#45
This is a problem even without Apple News+.

When Apple News came out I really liked the idea of having a single place to get pushed real breaking news as they happened. But sadly Apple News (and News+) is not that. Some of it is on the publishers and media (ie everything is considered "breaking" these days) but I think Apple is also part of the problem by pushing out stories on their official[1] breaking news channels that are not in fact really breaking news or news at all. I'm not talking about the biases either, but it has pushed me notifications about active shootings (good) and sports (bad) using the same breaking news headlines.

[1] one of the confusion is probably what is and isn't an official channel. If i can't figure out if the channel is a hand curated one vs one generated by a faulty AI then that's a problem.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#46

Is this really an app you want to leave notifications on for, period? It feels like the kind of thing where you just say "okay now is time to Read Some News" and go see what's new. YMMV, I have generally turned off notifications for everything .

In an ideal world, you might want to get notifications once or twice a year for major events. And daily or weekly digests for the rest.

Ideally I’d like to subscribe to a curated actually “breaking news” feed that doesn’t spam me. Terrorist attack? Yes please. Plane crashed? Yes please. Rumors of Megan/Harry moving to Africa? Who the fuck cares?

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#47
I turned off notifications for the News app a long time ago, so I never noticed this problem.

The author just read ‘Digital Minimalism’ which is a good book so far (I am almost half way through reading it). Like the author, from reading this book I have been very mindful of use time on digital devices.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#48

I turned off notifications for the News app a long time ago, so I never noticed this problem. The author just read ‘Digital Minimalism’ which is a good book so far (I am almost half way through reading it). Like the author, from reading this book I have been very mindful of use time on digital devices.

Some people have turned off all notifications without reading any book ;)

Incidentally, I know this is iOS, but the OS X of old was very good at not letting any background stuff disturb your work. These days we have notifications even on the desktop and apps that steal the focus just because they displayed a dialog. Not even Apple is what they used to be.

Re: Apple News has a notification spam problem

#50
I encountered this problem very recently as well. I like receiving notifications for Breaking News but I don't need notifications for lifestyle suggestions. Unfortunately there is no classifier for this in the News App. My workaround was to go into the settings for News and turn off notifications for every media outlet other than the New York Times. It's definitely not fool-proof but keeps more sane.

There however seems to be no way to automatically get rid of notifications on my iPad once I have read them on my phone...

Post reply on HN