My only option is to disable Amber alerts completely. Got a better solution?
Like many people, this Amber alert took me by surprise, all groggy with sleep. I did not know what app it came from, or how to turn it off. After the second jarring alert, I turned off my phone for the night.
Apple, if you are out there, please suppress the Amber alert sound during my "do not disturb" hours.
iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.4
Hey Destinie,
Know your facts and do some research before you slam somebody. The new version of these alerts which included the new amber alert functionality, launched and automatically opted people in, without even notifying phone owners so we didn't "decide" to receive alerts. We were opted in and didn't know it until we got woken up. I received the alert as my phone blared twice waking me up in the middle of my night because I get up at 3:30am. So yeah now I'm making the decision to automatically turn those alerts off because getting sleep , being productive and keeping my job are more important to me than getting an alert in the middle of the night when I can't do anything about the amber alert. An alert which was formatted incorrectly so that the font was too big, I couldn't read it anyway and it crashed my phone and I had to,restart.
Try to be a little less quick on the trigger to judge people.
I like having the Amber alert turn on my phone, it might make a difference some day, but getting one at 3am is not ok.
FIrst the alert comes on my phone, I am woken out of a sound sleep, may not read it correctly before I remove it and then I have no way to get it back, so the information is now lost, along with my sleep, no one wins. Where I live, even our police go to bed at night. If I have the phone on DND and the alert only comes up on the screen, if I am awake I see it. Then it should saved in a message area, like mail and in the morning I can look at it, after I see that little red1.
IF you're going to make a system to help a kidnap child and you want everyone help in finding that child, make it so others will want to help. If I have only one of two options, on or off, the off button might win and then some child might lose.
Well the idea behind this needs to be thought through more thoroughly. If I'm in bed sleeping it isn't likely I'll be encountering someone that is the subject of an AMBER alert. If I turn them off because the loud siren wakes me up in the middle of the night, you've lost my participation completely. I'm sure thousands did turn them off today. You're defeating the entire purpose. Whereas if it respected DND, I would get the alert in the morning, where I might actually see the abductor's car on the road on the way to work.
Maybe Apple is contracturally obiliged not to silence the alerts, but it's certainly something they are able to do.
Well then stop complaining about it. You didn't have to turn them on in the first place, and Apple doesn't have to do anything about it. You decided to turn them on, so decide to turn them off and be happy. Nobody keeps track of when you sleep, it just goes out at one time to everybody who has them on.
Apple and Tim Cook -- hope you are looking!
If my kid ended up in an AMBER alert, I'd rather people get the alert on their own terms instead of not at all.
By not providing an alternate option to completely disabling AMBER alerts, it decreases the likelihood that people will receive them.
Please provide better options.
If you are required by law to issue some form of alert signal, please allow an option such as mute, leaving vibrate on to fulfill the signaling requirement.
But Destine my phone does currently keep track of when I don't want to be disturbed, ie sleeping.
I wasn't given a choice to turn them off when the feature appeared. They were ON automatically.
The point is I'd like to participate in the AMBER alert program because it's important. But not allowing people to control how they're notified you'll just make them turn the alerts off. Participation goes down and all those people aren't on the lookout for that particular vehicle with the abducted child in it. Everybody looses.
If you don't want to read complaints then you shouldn't be reading discussion boards in the first place. I came to this discussion looking to see if there was some nuanace in the settings I was missing.
I've left feedback for Apple and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Clearly there's things that bypass that like the safety of missing people. Like I said, it all goes out at the same time NOT BY APPLE (also not knowing or caring whether you're sleeping becasue a missing person is frankly more important than your sleep) and you chose to turn it on, so you can also choose to turn it off. Its really a simple solution. I could care less if you're complaining, but you're complaining about a personal decision you made to turn the notifications on for the Amber alert
Ladyhax wrote:
Apple and Tim Cook -- hope you are looking!
No, they are not. As has been explained, more than once I think, in this thread, this is a user-to-user forum. Apple is not reading here. Use the feedback page to let them know how you feel:
Well, KiltedTim that's a good idea, I will, but I certainly didn't have the information that it was the FCC governing body behind these.
For anyone interested:
No way am I going to get up and turn them on and then turn them off before I go to bed. They'll just stay off and defeat the purpose of the whole program.
I don't think that Apple has any say in this. Those alerts were part of co-operative agreement between the cell carriers, law enforcement, and the National Center for missing children. While you can opt in and opt out of them on your own phone, if you "opt in" they are on, period. So yes, your only choices are to enable or disable them. From my readings of press releases and news stories about them, that is by design and neither a carrier nor a cell phone manufacturer can alter that basic functionality.
Being 'able' to do something, and it being 'legal', are sometimes two different things. I'm 'able' to do a lot of things that the law does not allow me to do.
Either enable or disable the Amber alerts. Turn them off when you want to be undisturbed. Turn them back on when you want to have them on. Simple.
Then let it defeat the purpose of the program on your end.
For me, personally, as a parent, I don't mind Amber alerts. If I got an Amber alert at 3 a.m., that stated that there was a kidnapping a few miles away? I'd be staying up the rest of the night, to keep watch over my family.
But, hey, choose what works best for you. No skin off our noses.
scottinhawaii wrote:
I wasn't given a choice to turn them off when the feature appeared. They were ON automatically.
The point is I'd like to participate in the AMBER alert program because it's important. But not allowing people to control how they're notified you'll just make them turn the alerts off. Participation goes down and all those people aren't on the lookout for that particular vehicle with the abducted child in it. Everybody looses.
Then complain to the FCC about both of these issues. They are the ones who defined how it should work. The carriers and the phone manufacturers do what they have to to comply with the regulations. They don't make the rules.
If there is some FCC regulation that prevents muting Amber Alerts, then why do they mute just fine on my work-issued Blackberry? The iPhone wakes me up in the middle of the night which is useless and counterproductive (if the car hasn't driven into my bedroom then there's not much else I can do at that time) but the Blackberry is nice and silent. It just leaves me a notification that I can read in the morning.
There should be an option that lets the user decide whether or not to let the Amber Alerts or emergency alerts break through the DND settings (and they should be independent of one another). Emergency alerts I would like at any time. Amber Alerts I would like when I'm awake. Right now I have set the Amber Alerts to off.
Amber alert woke me up, despite "do not disturb" setting.
