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.

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.

As far as the iPhone goes, it’s probably good enough if it can be configured to always send notifications to the associated Apple Watch and/or AirPods, and just plain shut up if those accessories are not around.

By default the Apple Watch duplicates the settings on the iPhone (Whether to show notification content, DND settings etc) but it can be customised. You could set the phone to never show notifications and always be silent, and the Watch to show notifications and vibrate.

But then how will people know how much friends you have? Some people that have these obnoxious continuous gongs going off while they are messaging other people are just oblivious but many want to make sure others can’t miss how incredibly popular they are.

Don't you want your phone to make noise so that you can come back and get it because you have a phone call or message? This makes no sense to me.

It’s antisocial to leave your phone about so it disturbs other people while you’re gone. It’s a mobile phone, take it with you if you need to receive calls or messages. If you don’t need to receive calls or messages and want to leave it somewhere, put it on silent.

Surely it depends on where you leave it?

Leaving it ringing for hours in a crowded office is obnoxious; leaving it on a side table in your house while you do some chores is totally normal.

And if you're at home by yourself?

Then it doesn’t disturb other people, does it?

Just referring to around the house or my shop really. I leave my phone just lying wherever, texts still come in. If it knew I wasn't nearby and I left it on the dining room table at home, at least it wouldn't buzz to disrupt the rest of my family.

iPhone X does this if you’re looking at the screen

Yes and Android phones have been doing it for a while

That should be Apple's new motto.