> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”

Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage notifications on a smartphone (and if I do, have it change on me with some future update).

I've been saying it since around 2004-2005 - even before smartphones - that consolidating everything into one device is a bad idea.

One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable. You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.

I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.

My strategy here is to default notifications off for everything other than calls and texts.

And then manually open Gmail to check mail, manually open Instagram when I feel like checking notifications, etc.

It’s such a better experience when you’re opening an app because you want to, and not because a notification is baiting you.

Android makes it really easy to disable notifications from any app. Pull down the notifications list, long press, select "Turn off" (or "Settings" if you want more details).

It's also possible to make an Android device ask for every permission, including notifications, when a new app is installed. So it's also easy to deny most apps access to notifications, address book, camera, etc. I think it's the default on current Samsung phones, for instance.

Adding on to this I think it's bizarre how you need to have a phone to navigate life now and corporations just assume you have one. So for example, using QR codes to gain entry to things. It's weird to think about how we all carry around this expensive computer and think nothing of it. It's like when we laugh about how people in the Middle Ages carried a personal knife for eating because hosts wouldn't supply you with a knife. The knives even came in more fancy and expensive versions for the rich kind of like the Android/iPhone divide. I wonder if historians will talk about these phones in the future.

> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.

I use an Oura ring because of this. I want 1) no notifications 2) passive health monitoring 3) no subscription

I was early enough to be grandfathered into no subscription. The app itself gets worse all the time as they try to do provide higher level guidance and make the data harder to see. But it still serves its purpose.

If I had to pay the monthly subscription I might would probably forgo the category altogether.

> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but isn't it wild to think that such a limited device would likely be more expensive than the do-everything Apple Watch that includes the health features among a myriad of others? Selling perhaps in the thousands instead of the zillions, the development costs would be amortized over such a small user base it would be an incredibly niche product. It often falls to us techies to figure out if we can hack an acceptable solution out of the affordable mainstream product.

Ironically, or not. I bought an apple watch so that I could ignore my phone.

It works for me. I know whatever is on my phone will be there when I get back to it and in the meantime I know if I'm getting an urgent message or not.

> You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.

The most WTF thing was when Airpods got a firmware update that worsened the noise cancellation, because some patent troll sued them saying it violated some patent...

> Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc).

A lot of the Graphene/modscene folks use two phones (one cert and with minimal apps and the modded phone). I think it will become more popular with techies unless google goes fully closed source

> One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable

The complete opposite to this is Apple’s new UI for the iPhone. It’s so damn buggy I thought I accidentally clicked on Beta Testing!

… this has to be THE worst update thing they’ve pushed since forcing everyone to listen to U2

The refurbished pebble has been perfect for my iPhone. The more limited functionality is exactly what I want. It tells me if someone is calling, but I can’t answer on it. It displays calendar notifications/reminders. It doesn’t do social media, it doesn’t text, it is just a glorified beeper and fun little gadget basically.