Notification Spam in Apple News
Matthew Cassinelli writes about getting way too many notifications in Apple News:
Page after page of Apple News notifications, all from sources I barely actually read and who were attempting to grab my attention every 15-30 minutes – my Apple News account was spamming
It’s not that bad for me, but I also get push notifications for articles and human interest stories where it isn’t appropriate. I appreciate what Apple is trying to do with the News, but I don’t think it’s there yet. Here’s my personal list of issues:
- The information hierarchy is not there. The most important story should take up the most space, and ideally be in the upper left. After reading the “Today” section, I never feel like I know what the most important stories of the day are.
- There are too many opinion articles. I don’t read opinion articles, I appreciate that some people do, but opinion articles should be separate from news, ideally in their own section.
- The aforementioned issue with push notifications.
I worked on the Wall Street Journal’s iOS app for five years, and that publication performs swimmingly in all of these categories. I particularly want to highlight their push notifications, which are impeccable.