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What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

jacquescorbytuech.com

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Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#81

Post by iamacyborg »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #70
lanerobertlane wrote: post #24

If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…

Apple and Google failed to make push notifications usable for the past decade. Most important notifications drown in a sea of absolutely irrelevant nonsense. It's a very primitive mechanism where many apps compete for very little screen real estate. Beyond "something happened!" there isn't a whole lot of information in most push notifications. They are mostly not very actionable and very vague about what actually hap…

> The most used apps on my Android phone (older Google pixel model) are Firefox and gmail and just a handful of other things. As a notification channel, my email inbox is actually far more useful than mobile push notifications. They are more actionable and informative. And I can individually unsubscribe them or filter them out and easily find them back.

There’s also substantially more filtering happening in the inbox which is mostly useful from a user perspective.

Yahoo literally wrote a paper more than a decade ago showing how they can model predictive causal chains for emails they expect you to receive, as an example.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2740908.2741694

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#83

Post by asdff »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #70
lanerobertlane wrote: post #24

If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…

Apple and Google failed to make push notifications usable for the past decade. Most important notifications drown in a sea of absolutely irrelevant nonsense. It's a very primitive mechanism where many apps compete for very little screen real estate. Beyond "something happened!" there isn't a whole lot of information in most push notifications. They are mostly not very actionable and very vague about what actually hap…

Gee lets take a 5 inch screen phone and have every notification stack up in 1 inch worth of space. I really hate ios18. Too bad ios26 is even worse.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#84

Post by asdff »

balderdash wrote: post #9

I wish apple/google would implement better notification control - like the ability to turn off all marketing notifications, and a much better digest format

Too bad about the walled garden or you'd have this tweak already installed years ago.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#85

Post by rkagerer »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #62
pants2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.

Some banks also do this, and offer no way to segregate marketing from utilitarian push notifications. This is borderline abuse of trust IMO.

It's not borderline, it's absolutely crossed the line.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#86

Post by pants2 »

liotier wrote: post #39
pants2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.

The user legitimately considers the application as hostile - hence sandboxing... Notification spam filtering is now the obvious need at the sandbox's edge, with the whole customizable arsenal we have come to expect for our inbound mail. Of course, Google will not cooperate with anything likely to reduce sacro-sanct engagement !

I definitely run all my emails through an LLM filter and wish I could do the same for push notifications!

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#87

Post by pants2 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #40
pants2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.

And the worst part is that Apple could fix this in a heartbeat. Uber is straightforwardly in violation of App Store policies about "no advertising in push notifications", but a) they're too big to fail and b) Apple advertises via push notifications all the fucking time, so they have no leg to stand on here. It's infuriating that the one thing the App Store monopoly could be useful for isn't even actually used in prac…

I would love if Apple enforced that rule, but they certainly don't

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#88

Post by cassianoleal »

nathanmills wrote: post #73
unglaublich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one willingly says "yes" to advertisements, but people will say "yes" to important-updates(-and-advertisements).

Then why is it whenever I watch someone use their computer they always accept cookies?

1. accepting cookies is not the same as opting-in to advertisement

2. because most of the time, any other option is bloody inconvenient

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#89

Post by nickburns »

iamacyborg wrote: post #7
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Push notifications are for the user, not the marketer. From the author's blog: "I do Revenue Operation, helping Marketing, Sales and Customer Success teams with data, process and technology."

You think there might be some sort of interaction between both facets there? How is bad summarisation good for a user, for example?

> You think there might be some sort of interaction between both facets there?

With the exception of one trying to extract currency from the other, in exchange for something of dubious value—no.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#90

Post by OtomotO »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #78
lanerobertlane wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I order an Uber, I already know it is coming. I was the person who ordered it. This is how taxis worked for decades before smartphones existed. You phoned for a taxi, then remained vaguely aware that it would arrive shortly. The question is whether a single “it has arrived” notification is worth the surrounding noise: “driver accepted”, “driver is nearby”, “rate your driver”, “here’s 10% off your next ride”, and s…

The point of notifications is the convenience of not having to constantly check your phone for every single app you have (amazon delivery? just eats delivery? uber booking? claude finished its task?).

And the inconvenience to constantly having to check your phone
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