MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 95All these
options,
which most
users never
touch, and
still no way to
differentiate
critical
notifications
from all the
rest.displayed, and instead work on a systemic
means of separating notifications into two
groups: critical alerts that require
immediate action and casual stuff that can
wait.
What the notification system on the
iPhone really needs is to recognize that
notifications are regularly abused by
developers and are a major reason why
we all use our phones too much. Apple
should take the same systemic approach
to reducing notification impact in iOS 14 as
it did with location tracking in iOS 13. Make
notifications silent and non-interrupting by
default (no banners, they just appear in the
notification shade). Let apps define
specific “high priority” notifications, and
have to request that users enable them,
while telling users exactly what will
produce them.
For example, Twitter’s notifications for
likes, retweets, and follows would silently
deliver to Notification Center, but the app
would prompt you to allow direct
messages to be “high priority” where they
would produce alerts and sounds. The
Ring app would have silent notifications for
detected motion, but could request
allowing high priority notifications for when
your doorbell is rung or your alarm
triggered.
And let’s get rid of notification badges
entirely. The little red dot on app icons is a
useless vestige of an old mobile world. It is
high visual impact but low information
density—all it can do is provide a number,
which could mean anything depending on
the app. Worse, it doesn’t tell you if any
actions are needed or what they should
be. Their existence owes more to inertia
than to actually improving our phone
experience.- ALWAYS-ON DISPLAY WITH
COMPLICATIONS
The Apple Watch has an always-on
display. OLED Android phones have had
always-on displays for years. There’s no
reason why the OLED iPhone models can’t
have them as well.