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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

On iOS you won’t get notifications or be able to run anything in the background.

Ok, but what are the downsides?

As a user notifications are a problem, but as an app developer they absolutely work to drive engagement, which is why so many apps use them. So if you’re trying to run a business that’s a pretty important thing.

> As a user notifications are a problem, but as an app developer...

So do you develop apps but not use them? I can't think of a way the hypocrisy isn't shocking here. "Do unto others" and all that.

I’ve developed software all of my career that I personally have no use for.

I develop software to pay my bills. We are talking about notifications, not killing puppies.

We're not talking about whether or not you are killing puppies -- I don't think you're a sadist. Just "make stuff you would want to use." Or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or, if you prefer, "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

> Just "make stuff you would want to use."

So I should quit my job developing enterprise software because I don't personally have a use for enterprise software?

You think notifications are universally "a problem"? I find many notifications to be quite useful. Appointment reminders are VERY important to me and not at all a problem.

They probably mean generally a problem. Things like reminders seems like a good use case, but with all the apps trying to increase engagement, it seems necessary to mute notifications to an app right after downloading it.

You don’t need to “mute” them, just don’t approve the notifications permission request. Out of the 100+ apps I have installed, I have zero that annoy me with notifications.

Notification management is the problem. Not notifications themselves.

One part is on the system to provide the right management tools, the other is on the user to tell the system what notifications are important.

> Notification management is the problem. Not notifications themselves.

Notification abuse is the problem. Notifications have been so heavily abused by apps (and increasingly now by websites themselves) that makes the notification system itself look terrible.

Users don’t care about “driving engagement”. If your product’s user experience is important, or if is made with any empathy at all for the user, it won’t be spamming him with notifications purely to juice a startup vanity metric.

Unless I absolutely have to have the app (work or something), I avoid it. Webpage any day. It wont bug me in the middle of the night.

  3AM. Sleeping
  Phone: BING!!!
  Me: *groggy* shit, hope everything is ok...
  Me: *picks up phone*
  Phone: Rayman Adventures has updated!
  Me: *uninstalls Rayman Adventures, angrily goes back to sleep*

That’s an easy one - set Do Not Disturb to start at 10:00 and end at 7AM. It will still allow messages through for contacts that you specify.

In iOS 12, you can turn off notifications directly from the Notification Center for an app that bugs you.

Not to sound condescending but why would you have your notifications on at night? 10pm-7:30am do not disturb has been a godsend.

Work. Slack, texts, calls (could be anyone in my department whose number I don't know), PagerDuty, the random number PagerDuty call from. More of a pain to whitelist than to just avoid random apps with notification.

You have to specifically allow notifications after you install and launch the app. Just say “no” when it asks you for permission to send you push notifications.

Good luck, it sounds like a nightmare to be on call all the time.

One week out of five (rotation). Our software has to work (and work well) 24/7/365.

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