Set snooze duration for Mountain Lion notifications

Just to be clear I want a notification that allows me to set the alert to a time until said event. This is more important to me than setting a time from now, although we need both.

Maybe we should bombard them with requests to bring back the old snooze settings. If we all send requests at the same time linking to this discussion board (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4142568?answerId=21378140022#21378140022&ac_cid=tw123456#21378140) - and I know there are also others, perhaps someone will take note and do something about it...?

Ready, set, go. I'm sending my request right now to www.apple.com/feedback/ical.html

> www.apple.com/feedback/ical.html

Yes, done; feedback provided, thanks for the push.

This really baffles me. The "snooze" function is all but useless if all you have is one preset period. I'm not that finicky a person about this stuff, but really -- why did no-one in QA at Apple speak up about this during development? Or did someone get a bonus for "simplifying" the interface to make it more "Mac-like"?

The preset-snooze-it-or-tough-don't-use-it "standard" goes back to old bedside alarm clocks where you whack the bar and it snoozes for however long it snoozes and if you don't like it, get another clock.

A computer alarm, of course, is a much more flexible abstraction than that thing by my bed that can either buzz horribly or play a cassette tape. It should let you snooze it for however long you like, or at least give you a few choices. Apple snooze used to be like that.

But Mountain Lion has dragged "snooze" back into its cave and injured it.

Will Apple hear its cries for help, echoed through our pleas?

Or will it whack the Secret Internal Apple Bug Report Snooze Bar, with the uncustomizeable global preset of SLEEP FOREVER?

Message was edited by: Mark Hayes (typo fix)

I've already filed my "feedback form" with Apple but I'm not holding my breath while they "fix" it. I have solved my "Annnoyance" problem by turning off all Notifications in System Prefs > Notifications. Of course there's a better way: Revert to Lion (10.7.5 - pre-Notification Centre), at least for those of us who can still run Lion.

Mountain Lion's GUI is its message: the Sorcerer's Apprentice has lost control. 🙂

cah44 wrote:

I have now given up any hope of Apple sorting this out and I have installed Busycal http://www.busymac.com/busycal/ which has sorted out all my problems. I had months of missing appointments, because of not being able to customise my alerts. I have sent feedback to Apple about the problems I have been having and I have searched optimistically for updates to iCal in the App store. None has been forthcoming.

You can try Busycal for free for a month. I cannot begin to tell you how disappointed I am with Apple at such a horrrible design flaw in iCal and at their apparent laissez-faire attitude to its users.

Thanks cah44 for the link to the app. I had at one time searched for an alternative to Calendar but had no luck. I just downloaded the trial, liked it so much I bought it. Too bad it cost as much as the ML purchase. Hey Apple, you listening?

Tom

Oh, one more rant on Notifications. On my iPhone (4S) they add up each round, on my iPad (Gen 3) they have a pop up in the middle of the screen that must be dismissed (or viewed - what's the sense in that?), and when there are multiple from a day's worth of Notifications you could be there for a long time "Dismiss"ing them. It's almost faster to shut the iPad off and restart - which is what I do when there's a bunch of them. I've tried many different settings on the iPad, still they dominate at times upon waking up - guess it depends on how many Calendar events are "Sooze"d on my MBPro. The iPhone is no problem, when I unlock it they all disappear. Maybe I'll give the lock feature on my iPad a try and see if that makes them go away.

Tom

Thanks Tom (Golf25Radioman) and cah44 (indirectly). I've downloaded BusyCal's 30-day trial. Following the installation my initial reaction is that it feel like a keeper. I've been thinking about buying an iPad for years but if iCal is such a nuisance in on the iPad I'll keep waiting. Makes me wonder if there's a way to muzzle Notifications on an iPad?

Message was edited by: Max Likely

Max et. al.,

I too have gone with BusyCal 30 day trial. I think I like it.

Two things I've learned...

1) Keep Calendar syncing but just don't launch it. Calendar is still what email uses to add calendar events so when you add an event this way it will go into Calendar database, sync with iCloud and wind up in BusyCal. (It may skip the iCloud route but never the less it needs Calendar still accessing the data.

2) My iPad experience has been better than Tom's but I do use the lock feature. The only thing to note is that if you dismis the alert in iOS it dismisses the alert in Mac OS. At least thats my impression. Anyone else have any better info on this?

All in all I think I'll be a happy convert to BusyCal. Happy if you don't count that I'm having to buy extras. That used to be what Window's users had to do, not the Apple faithful! Count me dissapointed as well.

Randy

The very term ‘Snooze’ harkens back to the day of dumb alarm clocks which had no idea what time your event was on, only what time you wanted to be awoken—and for that reason, all they could do was just keep triggering the same alarm every 10 minutes or so. And sure enough, that seems to be the model Apple has adopted for this so-called ‘snooze’ in Notification Centre. Why on earth would you replicate the behaviour of an ancient and clueless device on today’s powerful computers?! The Mac should be smarter than this. If the event isn’t for another 2 hours, you don’t need to be reminded every 10 minutes! It should be smart enough to adjust the frequency, and you should be able adjust this behaviour somehow.

How about a snooze reminder in about a third of the time remaining each time? So for example, an alert set to 2 hours (120 minutes) before the event would trigger a snooze alert 40 minutes after the first one, leaving 80 minutes until the event. Then a second snooze alert would go off about 27 minutes later, leaving another 53 minutes until the event. The next one in around 18 minutes, and so on… increasing in frequency until it got down to say 5 minutes minimum. Other users might prefer even less frequent snooze alerts… say in a half of the time remaining each time, with a minimum of 10 minutes. So you should be able to set this somewhere, but I really think the timing needs to be smarter—based on the actual time remaining. Since some users won’t expect ‘snooze’ to work this way, why not change the button to say something that’s actually informative like ‘Remind me again in 40 minutes’!

SnoozeMaster is now avaiable from the Mac App Store, for MacOS X 10.8 and up.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snoozemaster/id614955483?mt=12

It addresses this exact issue. You'll be able to configure different pre-set snooze times, enter custom snooze times when an alarm triggers, etc. It's what snoozing should've been from the get go.

More information:

http://on-core.com/snoozemaster/

Oh gee. You post this cool looking utility about 30 minutes after my BusyCal trial expired and I plunked down $30 for a registered version. I know it's not your fault. Just pittiful timing!

Well I'm looking forward to hearing what others have to say about this little utility. At $2 it sure is worth a try.

Does this work with Reminders or just with Calendar events? I need the variable snooze facility for both, but particularly with Reminders.

Only Calendar Events at this time, Blue.

We'll look into Reminders for a future version.

Future version; as in, later today?

😁

I would pay more than $2 for that!

Sorry, not later today.

We need to get more acquainted with Reminders first. But thanks to your feedback it's the first item on the to-do list. 😉