This is from February and inactive now. The top post calling apple out for violating their own guidelines is gold though, even though that's obviously meaningless
To see Apple's reply, you have to click "Helpful Answers ⬇" and select "All Replies." There, you can see the response from "ManJor," an Apple Community Specialist.
For your convenience, here's what ManJor wrote:
> Hello arjangch,
> We would like to see how we can help you with your Mac. Have you clicked on try now? This will be the easiest way to stop the notification. If you restart the Mac, does the issue return? Follow the steps in this link to restart the Mac: [Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac][1]
Apple has become the very thing they criticized, or even worse. Microsoft had nagged me twice (one notification, one "try Edge" when switching to FF) about Edge.
I find the "reboot" advice equally funny. As if this notification itself is a bug and shouldn't have been there to start with. What's next - try scanning your drive for a virus?
I have the latest newest xbox, and it's so confusing, I couldn't actually tell you the name of it. I think it's pretty close to what you have there. Maybe without the "360"? But I distinctly recall that it seems to be a mishmash of other xbox names.
Microsoft is pretty weird about all of these things. I get the "hey we could just import your bookmarks and you'd never have to see Chrome again" from time to time. I also remember some major Windows update when you couldn't see your desktop, and you got this super weird "ALL YOUR FILES ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU LEFT THEM" slideshow.
Also, "are you sure you want to keep using X to open .xyz files?" Yeah I'm sure, that's why I checked the checkbox "don't ask me again". And now you're asking me again. (I get why they do this... people accidentally click "never ask me again" but didn't like the choice they made, and there is no obvious way to make it let you pick again.)
I wish they made Windows Pro+ where for an extra $20 it would turn off all "friendly" features. Controversial opinion: I just want my OS to provide some APIs and time slice between processes. Anything else can be done in userspace.
This reminds me of every Apple issue I’ve ever had. I try to Google it and the consensus from the Apple fans and managers in the threads is always that the people with the issues are wrong and Apple is right. No matter how crazy it is. If someone asks “How do I do X”, most responses will be “Well why do you want to do that? Just trust Apple to know what is best.”
It’s very different than when I Google about problems on other platforms.
You want to maximize the window? Just go Fullscreen! You want to see the dock? Just manually resize the window. It will remember the size you left it at! Except it doesn't, it resizes every window every time to some random two thirds of the screen, just in case I need to...?
Why on earth would the green arrows button do anything except fill the desktop with the window?
Because not every manager is, nor needs to be, Windows?
Prior to the green button gaining the fullscreen functionality, it used to toggle between two sizes: (A) a developer-determined default size and (B) as large as the window needs to be to accommodate the content at the content's current zoom level.
This is inherited from macOS' days as NeXTSTEP, since the "global menu bar" was originally a floating palette window whose submenus could be detached and float, too. If windows were allowed to fill the screen, they would have blocked access to the menus. So, windows were made only as large as necessary, no more than that.
To me, macOS' behaviour always made more sense. Why should a window need to be bigger than its content? Drives me nuts to see 27" diagonal displays with huge Chrome windows showing a column of text about 6" wide and then the remainder is just white space.
It feels like Microsoft cottoned on to that with its Aero Snap feature in Windows 7 that far too few people actually use. So much wasted screen real estate.
> Why on earth would the green arrows button do anything except fill the desktop with the window?
That's exactly what they do. You click the green button, it fills the screen with a window.
Ugh, this has never made sense to me. A “fit to content” button might make sense, but there should also be a maximize button (which is not the same as a full screen button). You might like having distractions everywhere on your screen, but I don’t.
If distractions are the problem, how does full screen mode not fit the bill? It's literally just the window content, nothing else. You can choose to show the menu bar and you can see the Dock by placing your mouse cursor at the edge of the screen.
If you really need Windows' behaviour, use something like Better Snap Tool to add maximise behaviour on right or middle click.
Or if you prefer Aero Snap-style resizing, Tiles can also do it, and it's free.
You could use an app like BetterSnapTool or Tiles. With both, you can set up Aero Snap-like hot edges to change window size. With BST, you can also set right or middle clicking on the traffic lights to do custom actions, including Windows-style maximise.
The odd few times I need Windows-style maximise, usually in non-native apps that don't properly support AppKit/UIKit resizing behaviour (I'm looking at you, Teams, Discord, etc.), I'll use Tiles to do it. Free app.
It really means "tell the app to size its window to fit the content" so the effect is not always to fill the screen. It's so inconsistently implemented that they might as well just make it work like maximize on Windows.
Have you worked in customer service before? Usually, the options you've got as a customer service agent are pretty limited. When I was at Best Buy, we had people ask us to escalate complaints about anti-features (like the pin pad that tried to sign you up for email spam) all the time, and had no ability to take action on them.
> To see Apple's reply, you have to click "Helpful Answers ⬇" and select "All Replies." There, you can see the response from "ManJor," an Apple Community Specialist.
Hidden in this is another eggregious UX/UI pattern. Hiding things from the user in the name of minimalism. More often than not, when you click "Expand" it shows a tiny bit more information that would have taken the same space as the "Expand" button itself. For the love of the fucking god, please stop doing this shit.
Or it's some misguided attempt at increasing "user engagement." Same as those awful nagging newsletter signup popups that every site decided to add one day.
This version of the dark pattern is specific to Safari, but both Microsoft and Apple have been doing this ~forever with their operating systems' respective "learn about what's new in [OS version]" notifications. Microsoft in particular has been doing this since at least XP. (Source: installing XP thousands of times at a computer recycler as a teenager.) Heck, Ubuntu has even done a few of these from time to time—for a while there was one for Ubuntu One.
In all cases, the way to get rid of these kinds of out-of-box-experience pop-ups is to assent to them, then immediately close whatever presentation window gets opened. The OS here is like a bureaucrat covering its ass—it doesn't actually record whether you fully watch the presentation, it just needs to put a checkmark beside "got the user to open the OOBE presentation" and then stops caring.
Not to say any of this is acceptable, but it's been "a thing" for a long time now, and we should really be looking at the how-and-why of the larger dark pattern here, rather than just this specific implementation.
> Microsoft and Apple have been doing this ~forever with their operating systems' respective "learn about what's new in [OS version]" notifications.
I have a MacBook I keep on the couch for random browsing while watching TV. It's a 2010 vintage one. I once spent an afternoon googling to work out how to shut off the "Upgrade MacOS now!" alerts, that'd link me to a page in Software Update which said "You can't install MacOS (whatever fucking version) on this computer".
(I mean, they can't even get the evil dark patterns right. Surely that notification should link directly to the Apple store page for a new MacBook with a time limited discount code countdown ticking? You know, to increase the sense of urgency and properly flatten the conversion funnel?)
The fun dark pattern now is I can't copy images from Chrome and send them to non-Apple recipients in iMessage. But screenshots and copying images from Safari works fine.
Just to get the concept a soft introduction, there are people saying we should switch to the term "coercive design."
The reasons for it are fairly obvious, and I'm dubious about the degree to which some prioritize these things. But overall, "coercive design" is actually pretty descriptive, and I figured it's better coming from me than someone who likely consumes a lot of rage-bait and "dunking" fantasies in their free time.
Eh, probably somewhere in between. I'm guessing it's a .webp being dragged, and for some reason iMessage (as a drag-and-drop drop-target) is claiming to be able to accept those, so Chrome doesn't bother to offer a JPEG representation, but instead just hands over the .webp as is. Then iMessage takes it, and realizes that it does not, in fact, know what to do with it.
The more interesting thing is that iMessage does deliver the image, when it's to an iMessage recipient. Just not when it's to an SMS recipient. So I'm registering my guess for the root cause as: the drop-target content-type capabilities for the iMessage chat window aren't being dynamically varied with the recipient type.
Cell carriers often drop Image sends that aren't GIF/PNG/JPG, so it makes sense that they'd drop WEBP. You could open a feedback report about the issue about not dynamically varying the drop target properties.
That's not what a dark pattern is. They want you to watch their tutorial thing and they're going to keep bothering you until you at least open it. A dark pattern would be putting an ambiguous label on an opt-out checkbox for phone-home analytics or something.
The pattern here is the marketing / OOBE team of these companies assuming that every new installation maps to a user new to the software, such that "learning to use the software" is an important task to shove in the face of anyone who has a new computer, regardless of how experienced a user they might be.
It'd be easy enough to e.g. disable the "see what's new in [OS version]" pop-up if the user is importing their data from another computer that was already of that same OS version. But code like that doesn't get written, because it'd actively work against the KPIs that these teams are being judged by. They're trying to game those metrics by getting (forcing) as many people to click the box as possible, even when they know that the content does nothing for those users.
That's pretty "dark" — though it's not a dark UX pattern. More of a dark business-management pattern.
Yeah, unfortunately this is fairly typical for Apple to not follow their own guidelines for their own apps that generate revenue for them (Google pays Apple for Safari search traffic). I'm hoping antitrust action focuses on this double standard.
Apple shouldn't be allowed to develop a web browser or have an app store.
Google shouldn't be allowed to have a web browser, and its ads business should be split off from search.
They creep into synergies slowly, but it reaches really deep.
These companies have become grocery stores and movie production companies! Apple is now rumored to be building cars. In a decade they'll be cleaning our teeth and selling us our homes.
They tell us to dance to their beat or get cut off. Pay their 30% on our measly margins. Enough is enough. They can't soak into every aspect of our lives.
They should be allowed to develop anything they want. What they shouldn’t be allowed to do is to abuse their control of the platforms they own, to give them unfair advantage over competition.
The definition of "abuse" is slippery and companies can stay far ahead of the judges. The classic solution for this is to separate the incentives, let different companies compete for users rather than having a single company leverage its strength from product to product to product. Then users can decide what is "abuse" for themselves.
Everything in the law is slippery. Law isn’t built to be interpreted by simple if-else statements, but by humans, with taking lots of nuance, context and intention into the account.
Also - there’s a tons of ways you can abuse position when you own the platforms. It could be by pushing your products, by giving specific partners preferential access, unequal enforcement of rules, discriminatory rules, etc, etc. That’s why broad terms like abuse exist in the context of the law, so you don’t have to list every single possible bad behavior and let judges decide.
Is that perfect? No. But I’d argue it’s better than your proposal.
This. I consider pretty much everything Apple does a fair game except for one thing - access to private APIs for their own products, same products that then compete on the market with the products from developers invited with the expectation to build on the same platform. This single-handly invalidates the entire WWDC effort.
If you want to make sure you have best products then do it through superior product, design and engineering craftsmanship. Don't 'cheat'!
It just does not feel right and it is mind-boggling why is this the case. One thing is to have a say on what the app store fee is and 30% is fine, this is your cost of distribution that you accept. But the existence of private APIs means that whatever you do on their platform comes with a risk of them building a better, more-integrated product simply because they have access to platform features you don't.
This is an incredibly bad position to be in as a developer on Apple platform developing any kind of serious product, let alone a competitor for existing Apple products (like we are doing, crazy enough to be building a Safari alternative).
Apple, open same APIs your consumer apps have and make it a fair game. This will spark innovation, creativity and different ways of doing same things. It is exactly what you should be thriving for as a leader in the industry.
That’s a little too extreme. They should just suspend the developer of Safari from posting to the App Store until Safari follows the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. If you treat it like every other app, then it’s all fair.
Good news, you'll be extremely happy to hear that your iTeeth can only chew Apple-branded produce, and that the electrical outlets in your iHome have all been replaced with Thunderbolt connectors.
Um, except Apple has actually been, throughout its history, more aggressive in supporting universal standards, and not less.
First to implement WiFi in a mainstream consumer computer, first in pushing USB-A in place of legacy connectors, first to push Thunderbolt 1 and make it universal, first to push Thunderbolt 2 and 3 as well.
Based on your invective about Thunderbolt, you appear to have Thunderbolt and Lightning confused. Thunderbolt is a universal standard; its development was led by Intel. Lightning, of course, is the ubiquitous iPhone connector that Apple was forced to develop because at the time, there wasn't anything around that satisfied all the requirements, and arguably, there still isn't. No, micro-USB isn't it, and no, USB-C isn't it either.
You might want to find a different party line to use when griping about Apple. This one is highly ineffective and isn't even accurate.
My general rule is: Technology shouldn’t initiate communications with me, ever. Ever ever. I call the shots, software needs to do what I tell it, and only what I tell it.
People can communicate with me through technology, so things like text messages/calls/emails triggering alerts, that’s fine. But an app, OS, website, etc should never try to initiate any sort of communication or alert on its own (only in response to something I’m doing.)
Software breaks this rule so often, but every single time, it’s inexcusable. I don’t care about your newsletter. I don’t care about “trying out” whatever shit you’re trying to push on me. No I don’t want “tips”. No I don’t want to “see what’s new” (if I did, I’d seek out the thing in your app that tells me what’s new.) I don’t want my first run in the Music app to consist of this big modal dialog that prevents me from doing anything until I press a big “Start Listening” button.
Every single one of these product decisions likely came from some PM who made the case for it citing “it really increases engagement in A/B tests” or “studies show users don’t know about <feature> unless we tell them”, but every one of those PM’s should be removed from decision making until they learn to behave. The software you make should be a tool for the user, not a tool for you to juice your metrics.
Apple software has gotten worse, and worse, and worse with this over the years, so much that I’d consider abandoning the entire ecosystem if it wasn’t likely just as bad on the other side.
The one that bugs me the most is when apps, particularly ones from Google, get an update and decide to get in your face about it.
Like get a message, tap the notification, and instead of being able to reply to it, suddenly the app is all "HEY CHECK OUT THESE FEATURES IN THIS 7-STEP MODAL DIALOG".
Like just fuck off already, I'm just trying to reply to something and I really don't give a shit about some PM's useless make-work feature.
Once exception: security related incidents. Critical software upgrades, fraud alerts, someone tried to access my account, credit card expired, severe weather warning, that sort of stuff.
In each of these cases (except software upgrades), you’ve set up such a notification (or did implicitly through a contractual agreement) yourself because you want to be notified in such an event. This isn’t so much technology reaching out to you, as a tool doing its job (which happens to involve notifications.)
Software updates, I don’t want notifications about either. At best give me a badge icon in the settings app or app store that I can check on my own. I’ll dig in and figure out what the badge means.
Not if you don't set it up! (I kid, of course. It always made me mad how iOS was supposed to be the OS that respects your attention and just silently does its job, but first-party apps are worse than third-party apps. Steve Jobs died and that idea went right out the window. Now it's more like "100% of iPad users have lots of disposable income that we could get 30% of!")
> The one I hate is the little bang red warning on settings to set up Apple Pay on my iPad. I’m never going to buy anything on my iPad!
Pro tip: you can remove that red warning by clicking to set up your Apple Pay and immediately returning to the previous screen without actually setting up anything.
(Yeah, it's ridiculous that you have to do that but it is what it is)
> I don’t want my first run in the Music app to consist of this big modal dialog
This is my biggest pet peeve, and it comes down to imperative vs declarative UI design. Imperative design attempts to guess what you know or want, like when an app insists on taking you through a "tour" of the app or telling you "where to start" the first time you use it.
Good design is declarative, not imperative. If there's a big empty space waiting for me to select something, then it should tell me why its empty. That's useful whether I'm a first-time user or someone who just hasn't used the tool in a while. But don't guess. Nine times out of ten you're wrong, and the remaining time it's still useless because I'll forget five minutes after I dismiss your little popup.
The Z generation is used to explore the UI by themselves.
For example, if they saw something partially reveal on the left, they try to swipe it / click it / or press left arrow if you are using a remote control.
But previous generation isn't really used to it. My mom sometimes(actually happens a lot) have difficulties for such ui and asks me how to use it.(she don't really realize she can just go left to reveal it) The declarative design here outright didn't work as far as I see. A touring could be really helpful for such recipients.
I guess there should be a global toggle somewhere to change between `Just let me explore` and `Tell me how to use it`.
And if one day you no longer need tours on new software, you can just toggle it off yourself.
This is some "net promoter score" cult thing that somebody thinks is an appropriate metric to be judged on. The metric is dumb enough even if it could be accurately measured, but it's also one of the noisiest possible things you can sample, especially when your method is to ask it in an offensive and annoying way that interrupts someone who is trying to work.
I use office over google docs for various business reasons, but I have so much ill will towards Microsoft from how annoying they are with notifications. It's like they think buying their software is a license to pester you.
Oh, you must be right, I hadn't made the connection to the NPS.
It is particularly unfit for Windows, because of the extreme network effects that have solidified Windows dominant position. Nobody really chooses Windows, it's just the default. If anything, people will wonder, "wait, I can choose something else?"
NPS can be useful in certain contexts, especially when communicating in large organizations, even though it can be noisy and is usually annoying to be nagged about as an end-user.
>My general rule is: Technology shouldn’t initiate communications with me, ever. Ever ever. I call the shots, software needs to do what I tell it, and only what I tell it.
I'm with you. I get very annoyed even by Apple these days that often spam me about updating my system or some software. I do realise there's probably a system setting somewhere to disable these notifications, but I feel it should be the default.
Also what annoys me is when software 'secretly' updates in the background. I want to initiate software updates whenever it suits me best. Again, can probably be disabled on macOS or iOS, but I feel it should be the default.
Also Apple's Music subscription service ads in the Music app get to my nerve. I don't care for it and don't want to see it ever ...
As a dev I hate all the new security stuff that is being added to macOS, especially notarisation. It's becoming more and more of a hassle to publish apps on macOS and it already was painful enough with the certificates and profiles and such.
I do understand that all these annoyances for me are of benefit to the average user
These kinds of issues are part of what makes me annoyed with macOS and iOS these days. In the future I do hope to switch away to another platform (likely BSD, perhaps Linux) & perhaps keep a few old Macs around for legacy gaming and just having a nice, simpler environment to play in every now and then.
For reference: I've been a 'hard-core' Macintosh user since System 6.0 [0].
That's an alert from "people", for a stretched definition of what "people" means. A bank is full of people who (purportedly) represent your interests, so the notification is from their fraud team, not a machine. Per se.
I think the difference in magnitude turns it into a difference in kind.
Fraud alerts are something I asked to have sent to me, so to me it’s more of a tool doing its job. A tool I chose to use. Similarly if I decide I wanted to be alerted about severe weather, a notification isn’t just “technology contacting me”, it’s a tool I use, performing its expected function.
Of course it's from the computer. It's an electronic message. What a weird and pointless distinction. It's still programmed to do that on behalf of the bank's fraud department, a service done by people at the bank that you engage to protect your money. It's a service.
Not like the Safari notification. It helps you in no way, it's not a service. It's an ad.
The line between "user initiated" and "app initiated" is not always that clear, but I agree with your general sentiment.
As some examples to consider: explicit one-to-many communications, actions that might warrant a notification where users explicitly dispatching communication would be cumbersome or undesirable (think mobile games).
One-to-many communications should generally fall in the category of “person communicating with me through technology”, which is ok by my standard. Then my anger turns to the person who may be doing the one-to-many communications inappropriately (analogous to shouting in the library or sending junk mail) and not the software.
> actions that might warrant a notification where users explicitly dispatching communication would be cumbersome or undesirable (think mobile games).
huh? Why is my mobile game sending me notifications? No thanks. (Sounds like a perfect example of something I’d hate TBH.) Mario RUN did this once. Sent me a push notification to… play more Mario RUN. I uninstalled it.
If you're playing a mobile game with friends, presumably you care when it's your turn. I certainly do. I wasn't thinking of single-player games, I agree there's basically no reason those should be sending push notifications.
Can't speak for the original poster, but I do not trust that software updates won't simply break something.
I get that the intention is to FIX something, but it seems very trusting to assume that something else won't just break. If I depend on some software and I'm using it without issue, I probably don't want to just randomly change it when I'm not experiencing a reason to change it.
I am the boss! If someone defies me and pisses on my face, I deal with him! I smash him into the ground! Unless I'm not stronk enough; then I take no action except handing out the loot! TREMBLE, MORTALS!
The Windows ecosystem (in the case of computers) and Google ecosystem (in the case of phones).
I’d consider using Linux if I didn’t have to use macOS for my day job, but I recall it not being much better (KDE would still put up tips on startup, I still remember getting lots of first-run popups the last time I tried GNOME3 too…)
I can understand that there are places/screens/experiences where you'd like some peace and quiet but the idea that communication with technology should as a "general rule" not "ever. ever ever" be anything but unidirectional from user to device is absurd.
I’d welcome a challenge to this rule or trying to find an exception to it!
I actually think about this a lot. I try to keep mental track for every notification I get and they’re all either:
1. A person contacting me
2. The response for some action I took, and is typically just a chime or small transient notification (a download finished, etc)
3. Something that shouldn’t exist at all (“try new feature” dialogs, etc)
4. The grey area: Something I wanted to know, but could have been implemented in a better way.
The “other way” things should be implemented in case 4 varies, but here are some examples:
- Xcode shouldn’t alert me with a modal popup when something fails, it should just put the failed status in a multi-item notification drawer that can be ignored
- That thing telling me my password is incorrect shouldn’t be a modal popup, but just a small status text on the UI I’m already using
- The “tips”/“what’s new in X” information should be in the app’s menu in a section that can have some level of prominence so long as it’s reasonable (bold, highlighted, etc, but never in a dialog that I have to dismiss to continue using your app.)
I was clumsily pointing out the oddity of saying "ever" in a rule ostensibly "general" aka with exceptions. Otherwise, it just looks like a preference to me. Why should (3) never exist at all? I've definitely found features that have existed for a long time in a product and wished I somehow new earlier. Does it mean they could have designed it better? Perhaps. An app driven nudge is a hammer, sure, but it's not a sacred violation.
> This notification should be escalated as a bug, as it violates Apple Human Interface Guidelines
Bold of them to assume that Apple will follow their own guidelines if they are detrimental to their product strategy.
Objectively speaking, these are guidelines, so they are not enforceable the same way App Store rules are. But there's also a lot to say about the differences between Apple as a platform and a Apple as a product.
I think Apple has never even remotely consider the idea of setting the sames rules for their third-party ecosystem and their own products. They have build billionaire business lines on the sole idea of products that integrate better with MacOS and iOS (Safari, Maps, Mail, etc) Anyone who uses an Apple product knows this.
So I think is pointless to call them out on that. This has been Apple's playbook for the last 20 years and it will be for years to come unless regulation catches up to them. Time will tell.
Particularly given that Apple is probably the worst offender in term of nagging for services and not taking no for an answer. On every iOS update I will be nagged for Apple services that I have already opted out 20 times.
My least favorite and most annoying Google nag is the not-so-helpful reminder of which google account I am logged-in as on every google doc I open through out the day. A dismiss click is needed for "You're currently signed in as xxxxx@whatever.com". No disable button. Just suffer.
This is because Google Docs operates similarly to YouTube in that your signed-in user is determined by a per-tab session. Especially for editing content, a workplace-owned Doc with misconfigured permissions might open on your personal on account when you probably want to sign in with your workspace email.
This reminds me of the "Do Not Disturb while Driving" notification, where, despite not ever planning to use the feature, I had to turn it on, then off, to get the notification to stop showing up.
This is the same for the Microphone Dictation button on the keyboard on iOS. If you don't intend to use it, you have to turn it on, then off to get the button to go away, even though it's off by default
Apple also does not let you uninstall Apple Music, nor disable opening it from interactions with bluetooth headphones. It's incredibly annoying and they refuse to address it.
The macOS "Updates are available" notification similarly only has Update Now or Remind Me Tomorrow options. There's no "I don't want to upgrade to the last macOS release".
My Windows machine doesn't seem to have this problem. OTOH it has a problem where every major update Microsoft tries its best to trick me into using Edge as my default browser again.
Remember when we used to have antitrust investigations over this kind of thing?
With the previous macOS versions I had similar difficulties trying to get rid of the notification popup offering a “quick tour” of the OS after an update. In Big Sur the only persistently annoying popup is the one that appears for not gracefully unplugging external storage. It gets triggered by a power outage and it haunts me for days or weeks and then it randomly goes away. Pretty annoying.
I could only live with apple after I have blocked all apple nagware domains at pihole. Life is beautiful now:
* i don't get update notifications, while i am watching a movie on apple tv. ( who thought thats a good idea ?? )
* i don't get nagware on phone to update the phone
* no more "please use icloud" bs
Honestly, whenever i want to update my device i see latest version and reviews. If a bunch of reddit posts show it to be nagware than actual updates, i skip it.
Of course, it needs some work on my part. But if you like apple hardware, this might be a good way.
If you are looking for domains to block, let me know and i can send the full list including some regexes that i use in pihole.
