Comment by callc
6 days ago
Respectfully disagree. Toggle buttons have an expected behavior that everyone understands.
It should work just like a physical button. I don’t appreciate the “we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly” MITM.
> we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly
9/10 times I've used this setting, what I've actually wanted was to temporarily change the behavior. This just saves me from the need to remember to undo it (which I won't remember in a timely manner).
This isn't "we know better than you" paternalistic control - the default/easy behavior should cater to the actions and situation we do regularly. I'm sure they do, in fact, know that for most of their customers, when they disable wifi it's because that user wants to temporarily disconnect from the current wifi, but will want to use wifi shortly after, but won't necessarily remember to go into settings and re-enable.
It should be symmetrically facile to do both behaviors, assuming there's not an invisible thumb on the scale that wants to procedurally force you to make the choice most in the company's interest. But its not.
It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.
Yet, here there is needless nuance added because there is a benefit to the company that the device is either chronically or as much as possible connected to the internet, connected to bluetooth, low battery mode is off, and if they cant have it connected to the internet and bluetooth, well, at least keep the beaconing on and sending out signals and at least meshing so advertisers and stores and their own Find/lost services are still able to benefit.
Thats not even getting into passive Fingerprinting and secondary furtive location tracking. I was surprised to learn that having bluetooth on identifies your device to stores and anyone else who can track bluetooth devices in range. Even when you toggled off bluetooth, you're still being profiled. I wonder if actually going into settings and turning off bluetooth or wifi even totally stops the device from continuing to signal in all ways, it would be unsurprising if thats another UI nicety that doesnt actually mean what it says or implies
How does it benefit Apple for their customers to enable their wifi? They are fairly explicit about NOT tracking everything you do and selling it.
OTOH, it benefits the phone owner to use wifi, as it's lower power use than cellular the majority of the time.
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> It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.
Why?
I get you have some principled opinions or deep belief about tracking or betrayal from corporations or something. That’s nice.
But why should it be easier to do the things that people don’t want to do often instead of the things that people do want to do often?
Good UI makes repeated actions easier than rare actions. That is good UI because it makes the common action easier, conspiracy theory about tracking and fingerprinting be damned.
A bunch of the morons out there who turn off wifi out in public because they read some random NYPost article about it "tracking" you, would then be bitching to Apple and/or their cell carriers about why their performance is so bad at home when it doesn't auto-join wifi overnight.
I would agree with you that it should operate like a dumb toggle if they didn't have the notification saying that it would auto re-enable again.
So do you agree with it pestering you to enable iCloud if you dont want to and the fact that one of the options "allows" you to delay being asked again to accept something you never want is ok since it has the notification that it will try again later as implied by Not Now (but we'll try it again ad finitum later and circle back until you consent to Yes)?