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Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see Handoff become more clever, and for Apple to choose a more gentle sound for calls and notifications, along with the vibrations. I had a colleague once who left his iPhone on full volume and he seemed to get a lot of messages. One 'DING/BRRRRR!' was okay but when you were trying to work and all you could hear was 'DING DING DING BRRRBRRBRRRBRBRBRRR DING DING DING DINGDING' in a tone that penetrates all walls and earbuds, it's too much. Meanwhile, the person who has suddenly become popular is listening to music in their insane-impedance headphones so they don't hear shit, they don't know how fucking annoying their phone is, and they don't put it on silent.

Make phones silent by default. If you need the notifications to be audible it has to be a choice.

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You’re asking Apple to cure obnoxiousness.

Maybe. But there is room for improvement on the notifications, there is no reason why the phone needs to ring and vibrate on every notification.

If it notified the user a few seconds ago, it should have a delay until the next ring/vibration.

> If it notified the user a few seconds ago, it should have a delay until the next ring/vibration.

Multiple rapid notifications in a short window of time alert me to emergencies. Phones should be on vibrate in public, of course.

Or, honestly, just get an Apple Watch. Turn phone sounds off, wrist gets buzzed. It just works.

They do more than silence notifications; They allow you to effectively triage.

Your phone beeps and buzzes, you pick it up. The home screen shows "Email notification" because you're privacy conscious and don't show details on the lock screen, so you unlock it and enter your email app. It's marketing crap, so you close the app, but notice a Facebook notification, so you check that. And now you're on Facebook and off task.

Your watch buzzes, you look at it. It says "Gmail" because you're privacy conscious and you don't show the details on the notifications. You press the screen and see that it's spam. You dismiss the notification and the phone returns to showing you the time. You return to work.

Your watch buzzes, you look at it. It says "Gmail" because you're privacy conscious and you don't show the details on the notifications. You press the screen and see that it is from your solicitor saying some documents are ready to pick up. You hit Reply, press the microphone button, and dictate that you'll come over tomorrow after 4pm. You don't even notice there's a Facebook notification on your phone.

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