I.M.H.O.: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

Jake Levine says these days he’s using more push notifications and launching apps less, which he feels is impacting how companies need to track their success (instead of using launch counters and such). The statistics point is probably true, though I could care less about such things—if you’re building an app only to worry about how many times users launch it, you’re never going to be happy or successful. What I care about is how this is the exactly opposite of how I use my phone. Jake says:

Imagine an entire suite of apps with which you interact without ever opening. Imagine if app developers could send more data (images, videos) through push notifications, or even receive simple responses (“Yes” / “No”) from users without requiring users to launch the application itself.

So, basically, imagine push notification multi-media advertising. Yuck.

Our phones and the apps within them are with us at all times — they are starting to feel more and more like extensions of the brain, augmenting its inputs with sensors that don’t come pre-installed in humans.

I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t feel like an extension of my brain to get 200 Game Center challenges a day, or to get interrupted every time I try to watch a video because someone checked in near me on Facebook, etc. Perhaps Jake’s brain is just constantly firing in a million directions and he has shouting voices in his head.

I’d love to see some forward progress in notification interfaces from the major mobile operating system. That’s the type of change that could unleash a massive wave of innovation in app development.

You want innovation? Here it is: Make push notifications work like IMAP, not like POP. Instead of blanketing every one of my devices with a unique notification which must be manually cleared, be smart enough to clear notifications on my iPad when I read them on my iPhone, or vice versa. Allow me to turn notifications off everywhere with a single switch. Make this stuff less intrusive, not more.

When push notifications first landed in iOS I went nuts with them, enabling them in every app that asked. Same with my iPad, and then my Mac when OS X 10.8 was released. A few months back I had a realization that it was getting in my way everywhere and almost never being helpful.

Rather than being constantly asked to interact by every one of my devices, I switched off Notification Center on every device save my iPhone. And on my iPhone I removed sounds and banners and badge counts for anything I didn’t deeply care about (like Path messages from my family or FaceTime notifications). Instead of constantly seeing banners or hearing sounds and being forced to look at my iPhone, I only look when I want to and have time.

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erranttravelererranttraveler asked:
You mentioned that you are not an early person and get up at 10AM and go to sleep around 3AM. Do you and your wife have the same chronotype? And if not, does it cause any tension?

We are the same type under ideal circumstances, yes, but these days we’re not synced up much because of Oliver. Stacey wakes up early with the baby (usually around 6/7AM) and goes to be earlier at night (around 11PM). I tend to feed Oliver before I go to bed at 3AM and a few hours later he’s up with Stacey.

We’ve never been the type who worry too much about going to bed at the same time or waking up and the same time. On weekends we tend to both be up later and sleep later where possible. Since we don’t tend to do things early in the morning, sleeping later than her means I don’t miss much (other than precious baby play time, which is a shame), and staying up later means I can watch terrible TV without worrying about being judged (or spend extra time with the Xbox 360).

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AnonymousAnonymous asked:
How late do you sleep every day?

My average wake time is 10AM. I’m not a morning person. Never have been, seemingly never will be (though we’ll see what happens when Oliver is 3 or 4 years old and I am forced into it). I don’t work well in the morning and I’ve learned the most logical thing is not to fight it. I wake at 10AM and I go to bed around 3AM.

It’s amazing how quickly Oliver is growing. Time seems to be accelerating a bit each day. Feels like I can I look back over my shoulder and see the tiny, mash-faced version of him the day we brought him home from the hospital when he was nothing but drowsiness and wet diapers. But I look at him today and he’s already nearly 16 pounds and he’s laughing and playing with toys and he already cut two teeth this week. Soon he’ll be a toddler and this amazing time will have passed.

When Stacey was pregnant we were counting down the days until Oliver was due. We talked endlessly about the baby and how exciting it would be to have him out in the world and to finally interact with him. We wanted time to go by as quickly as possible. But now that he’s here, I desperately wish it would slow down.

These moments feel so precious and so fleeting.

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AnonymousAnonymous asked:
Is your wife designer / developer too ?

God no. If she was all we’d do all day is sit in front of computers and bitch about code or UI. That possible alternate life gives me nightmares. Don’t get me wrong, I like designers and developers, but I don’t think I could be married to one. In fact, I’m not sure how my wife can stand being married to me.