Needed: a mute switch for iOS notifications
Notifications—the banners and blue alerts that announce the arrival of new iMessages, emails, Twitter mentions, game turns, and more—are a common occurrence for active iOS device owners. The introduction of the subtler, less interruptive banner notifications in iOS 5 made such incoming alerts far less annoying than they’d become in the heyday of iOS 4. But iOS 5 also dropped an important control that had existed in iOS 4: a switch to turn notifications off.
Sometimes, you don’t want notifications to interrupt you—even subtly—when you’re using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. But Apple offers no way to silence banners and alerts in such cases.
You’d be forgiven if you thought that iOS 6 righted that wrong with its introduction of Do Not Disturb (at least, when Do Not Disturb works). But you’d be wrong. Do Not Disturb can mute incoming notifications—but only when your iOS device is locked. That is, Apple offers Do Not Disturb as a way to keep your sleeping iPhone silent when you, too, are asleep; a locked iPhone with Do Not Disturb enabled won’t illuminate the screen, vibrate, or make a sound when notifications arrive.
That’s a great feature. But it’s not enough.
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http://www.macworld.com/article/2025187/needed-a-mute-switch-for-ios-notifications.html
