Thursday, December 29, 2022

Options in macOS Update Notifications

Isaiah Carew:

Whoever is in charge of updates, really likes dark patterns.

  • It asks a Yes-or-No question that it does [not] allow you to answer with Yes or No.
  • It doesn’t provide any sort of “snooze” feature -- so non-techy users who might not know how to update manually are faced with now-or-never situation.

I’m pretty sure Apple knows they’re doing this and it’s done to “trick” users into updating even when they don’t want to in attempts to artificially drive up numbers of people that stay up to date.

The iOS alert for new OS versions also seems like it’s trying to trick me. There is a way to decline without scheduling the update for later in the day, but it feels like a puzzle that I have to figure out each time.

Sören:

I wish “auto-update” weren’t a binary switch, mostly because for apps I care about, I want to know there’s an update and read the release notes (but if I turn off auto-update, there’s just a constant huge list, and a lot of apps are jerks about telling you what’s new anyway)

Previously:

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Here's another one: For the notification that says "Some account services will not be available until you sign in again", clicking the "X" button to dismiss the notification will launch System Settings and take you to the Apple ID Settings.

Bug or dark pattern? Who can say...


@remmah: I'd like to disable that notification entirely. It seems to want me to log in to iCloud. I don't use iCloud. I have never used iCloud. I never want to use iCloud.

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