4 ms·

But that's exactly the point of the article. An alarm clock is near useless as well (for waking up anyway, that's why I use it) if it's silent just because you

by tel 15y ago

But that's exactly the point of the article. An alarm clock is near useless as well (for waking up anyway, that's why I use it) if it's silent just because you told the iPhone to be silent. It'd be disastrous if I accidentally muted my phone, failed to wake up, and missed a morning. Really, you want a "don't annoy me or people around me" button, but that's context sensitive. A design nobody has been able to implement yet. Apple just made an educated guess at it here.

natesm 15y ago
> Really, you want a "don't annoy me or people around me" button, but that's context sensitive. A design nobody has been able to implement yet. Apple just made an educated guess at it here. My dumbphone pretty much did that in like, 2005 or so: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ns_pixels/blag/old-phone-volume.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/ns_pixels/blag/old-phone-volume.jpg
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  My dumbphone still does this.
haberman 15y ago
> It'd be disastrous if I accidentally muted my phone, failed to wake up, and missed a morning. It'd also be disastrous if you accidentally turned your phone off and failed to wake up. It'd also be disastrous if you accidentally unplugged your alarm clock and failed to wake up. Or if you accidentally pushed the gas instead of the brake in your car. There's only so far that a device can go to protect you from yourself. If the harm done by this "helpfulness" can be great (like interrupting a symphony performance for hundreds of people) it's better to err on the side of adhering to what the user actually did. In the case of a "silence" switch, that means being silent. Otherwise why is there a silence switch at all? FWIW, a lot of people (like me) can wake up to a vibrating phone, especially if it's laying on a hard surface like wood. So an alarm isn't necessarily useless just because the phone's speaker isn't making sound. > Really, you want a "don't annoy me or people around me" button, but that's context sensitive. No, what I want (really really) is a switch that turns off the phone's speaker absolutely.
covercash 15y ago
Siri is a potential solution: "Siri, do not disturb me for the next 2 hours."

by tel 15y ago

natesm 15y ago

> Really, you want a "don't annoy me or people around me" button, but that's context sensitive. A design nobody has been able to implement yet. Apple just made an educated guess at it here. My dumbphone pretty much did that in like, 2005 or so: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ns_pixels/blag/old-phone-volume.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/ns_pixels/blag/old-phone-volume.jpg

mkr-hn 15y ago
My dumbphone still does this.

haberman 15y ago

> It'd be disastrous if I accidentally muted my phone, failed to wake up, and missed a morning. It'd also be disastrous if you accidentally turned your phone off and failed to wake up. It'd also be disastrous if you accidentally unplugged your alarm clock and failed to wake up. Or if you accidentally pushed the gas instead of the brake in your car. There's only so far that a device can go to protect you from yourself. If the harm done by this "helpfulness" can be great (like interrupting a symphony performance for hundreds of people) it's better to err on the side of adhering to what the user actually did. In the case of a "silence" switch, that means being silent. Otherwise why is there a silence switch at all? FWIW, a lot of people (like me) can wake up to a vibrating phone, especially if it's laying on a hard surface like wood. So an alarm isn't necessarily useless just because the phone's speaker isn't making sound. > Really, you want a "don't annoy me or people around me" button, but that's context sensitive. No, what I want (really really) is a switch that turns off the phone's speaker absolutely.

covercash 15y ago

Siri is a potential solution: "Siri, do not disturb me for the next 2 hours."