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iOS 15 Humane

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Re: iOS 15 Humane

#281

Post by wilde »

eloisius wrote: post #254

If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. That an app gets either cart blanche to send me notifications or nothing at all drives me crazy. I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Re…

Apple also abuses push notifications to sell their services so I don’t see this ending any time soon :(

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#282

Post by bengale »

antonyh wrote: post #200

Batched notifications: I'd love this. As it currently stands, most of my apps have lost permission to notify because they abuse it. I don't want to be constantly prodded and poked to interact, so there's very few that get it enabled now. That even includes email, and it's so much better. It's reduced screen time massively, and I mostly check email on desktop instead now with my phone as a secondary on-the-go way of c…

The majority of my apps are set to deliver quietly on iOS so they just go into my notification drawer without an alert.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#283

Post by rattray »

k3liutZu wrote: post #279
eloisius wrote: post #254

If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. That an app gets either cart blanche to send me notifications or nothing at all drives me crazy. I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Re…

> I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Yeah, this really drives me crazy.

I use Android, which lets you enable/disable particular notification categories.

I've simply uninstalled all food delivery apps that send promotions using the "General" category (IIRC Grubhub was the work offender).

Uber Eats and DoorDash categorize their promotional notifications appropriately, so I never see them (and do get notifs about my deliveries).

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#284

Post by ospohngellert »

I actually really like apple's screen time limit capabilities. Being able to limit my time on twitch/youtube has been really helpful for me. However, one thing I would like to see is limiting the number of times I can open an app. Even if I limit email to 3 minutes, I can still open it 15 times a day :D

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#285

Post by kajaktum »

That means we need to stop using ((((free))))) services and start paying for them. Unless its literal charity, I have no reason to believe that any of these free company isn't trying to manipulating me in some other ways.

One of these is Youtube. Hosting petabytes of on-demand videos is an extremely daunting feat. Why are you surprised that you are hit with ads? What were they supposed to do? For whatever reason, no one wants to pay for premium to remove these ads. Instead, we just have this back and forth with people coming up with extensions and Google coming up with ways to circumvent these. Both sides are going to get crazier if this goes on.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#286

Post by fauigerzigerk »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #240
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You literally have both, and more I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not. It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over. That said, I d…

> I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not. This is true, but RPi Zeros are so cheap and powerful that I think it's much easier for community organisations (schools, scouts, dedicated groups) to start hacking events. The kid who can't get…

I don't disagree, but I think we're talking about a couple different issues here.

One question is whether a low income but educated and dedicated parent can find a way to acquire some hackable device for a highly motivated kid. I think the answer is probably yes, with some exceptions in extremely poor countries.

But that's not the most likely scenario. A far more likely scenario is a kid that wants to modify the device they're actually using on a daily basis to make it do something slightly different. There are no parents involved, and it would be utterly pointless to hack some completely different device like a Raspberry Pi just because it's more hackable.

So I worry that widespread use of locked down devices and locked down distribution channels makes the path from consumer to power user to hacker to software engineer to entrepreneur far less smooth. Some people who could have been interested in being more than mere consumers are going to be left behind.

You are absolutely right that access to all sorts of devices is hugely easier and cheaper than back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's definitely not all bleak. It was a decidedly rich country upper/middle class affair at the time. But we're also having to live with restrictions that would've been unimaginable back then.

Just imagine Microsoft in 1995 attempting to restrict what software people were allowed to install on their PCs. Imagine what regulators would have said if Microsoft had tried to charge 30% on all software and content loaded onto PCs. Or what if Microsoft had been able to issue no-recourse lifetime bans on using any of their software and platforms?

The objection that Microsoft was a monopolist isn't really convicing given that they were replaced by a hugely more powerful and ubiquitous oligopoly that now runs the actual economy, not some tiny niche called "The New Economy".

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#287

Post by BeFlatXIII »

camillomiller wrote: post #136
creata wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the least charitable reading of Crazyontap's comment. Couldn't you have just inserted the implied: > I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity [with regard to the computer they're using]. Also: > So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view. You'll have to explai…

Creative professionals gained immensely through Apple's approach. If I'm a music producer, a film maker, a writer, a graphic designer, and so on, I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time. I don't need or want to spend time on thinking what's the best set of drivers I should install, or worrying about all the dependencies of this new open source program with no hint of UX-design I've just insta…

> it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.

This feels related to the saying that it’s easier to innovate down the stack than it is to innovate up the stack. It’s far easier for Apple to design and fabricate its own chips than it would be for Intel to make its own consumer OS.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#288

Post by grishka »

andai wrote: post #263
grishka wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more interesting in Android. There's no notification permission , as every app is able to send notifications by default. But, there are notification categories. You can turn them off individually. Yes, the app developer is supposed to specify them themselves. And most actually do. Those who don't drive me nuts tho. I'm very careful with what I receive notifications about. Apple could definitely copy that. Right…

>notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the phone I get a bunch of messages from my friend on Steam, so I tap to read them, but if I tap the wrong way it opens the app instead, makes all the messages disappear, and I have to wait until I get to a place with internet again before I can see what he said.

I've been using Android for around 10 years. I'm very much used to using the notification shade like a to-do list: I often leave non-urgent notifications to hang in there to deal with them later.

Another thing that drives me absolutely nuts in iOS, and that stems form its lack of a usable notification system, is that it considers it okay to interrupt your train of thought with modal alerts. When your battery gets low, you get an alert in your face. When there's a system update, you get an alert in your face when you unlock the device (and then an annoying, very dark-pattern-y "enter your passcode to install overnight" screen). When there's any number of things about Apple services you couldn't care less about, you get an alert in your face, too. On (stock) Android, all these things are notifications that can be ignored for as long as you desire.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#289

Post by pdimitar »

The problem with several of these is that most humans are in denial.

- They will absolutely yell at their phone "YES, THIS TIME WAS WELL-SPENT!" even after an absolutely soul-crushing political "discussion" session that can only be equated to a real-life screaming contest with a bunch of others. And even with them feeling emotionally drained, angry and tired, they'll still say the time was well-spent.

You know, sunk cost fallacy and all. The "maximum engagement" industry knows all these phenomena very well and they have weaponized them at least a decade ago, if not more.

- "Finite" feeds. They are still infinite but now have page numbers. Sure that might help a little but but I don't think it will make an impact. Plus "Page #7" means nothing; after 10-20 posts from people in your feed it moves to "Page #8" so what's the point?

- Disabling Autoplay is related to the first one -- people are in denial. They'll just nervously tap on the play button. Almost nothing at all will change.

- Hiding certain sections like "Watch Now" is NEVER going to happen. Don't be delusional. That's the way the companies want to further engage you. They'll stop literally everything else before that.

- Greyscale is a cool idea. Didn't know about the reduced engagement with it. I'll try it out!

- Batched notifications are a good idea. Let's go even further: I want to fine-tune which notifications I can receive. I regularly need the notifications from my grocery app (when my wife makes changes to it) but I absolutely don't care about those "17 fantastic paleo meals for you to try today!", thank you very much. This has to stop.

- Showing time spent might increase accountability, or it might not. I know it could have helped me 5 years ago but I also know quite a lot of people who scream at their friends "dude, I've been 10 hours on Twitter today, how cool is that!" so that one is likely to be a hit or miss. I can see how it could help some.

- If you tell somebody that they are "mindlessly browsing" they'll uninstall your software the same minute. Don't. There has to be other ways. Even corny stuff like "are you happy how you spent the last hour?" would work better.

---

I applaud Apple's efforts but as usual, they are waaaaaaaaay too slow and too gradual. The axe has to fall harder and quicker.

Just an example. Open App Store on your iPhone. Just two days ago I had the same dumb "Gaming Essentials" section there that seems to appear fairly regularly, containing big earners like Fortnite, CoD, Candy Crush and several others. Of course Apple wants people to pick up these on a regular basis -- microtransactions lead to income for them as well.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#290

Post by squiggleblaz »

tshaddox wrote: post #103
vladvasiliu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not overly familiar with the low-level details of iPhones and Android phones, but it's not clear to me why it would be such a big effort to allow one to install whatever OS they like on an iPhone. Maybe display a big, scary "unofficial OS, you're on your own, don't bother us if your iPhone becomes unusable". Maybe have one jump through some hoops, like getting an "approval" code by signing some mile-long EULA on…

I think the point there isn’t a technical challenge, but rather a business challenge. Namely, Apple probably actually cares about how satisfied their customers are. They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware,…

> They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware, etc.).

I don't know what the state of the world is today, but I've installed custom OSes (mostly Linux) on every Mac I've owned (my most recent was a 2012 Retina which I really liked).

Installing a custom OS isn't easy and it's pretty obvious to everyone it means thinking "Yes, it's a good idea to lose support for almost every program I run". By "everyone", I really do mean that: I've never heard of an anecdote of someone who's mother wiped MacOS and threw Ubuntu on their box and encountered some bugs. Technical knowledge about security isn't out there, but we do get "Apple makes the system that is an iPhone, going away from Apple's product means abandoning my iPhone" seems to be there, even if they don't understand what it means for something to be an operating system.

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