One of the things I love about the Apple ecosystem is the device independence. I can receive alerts, text messages, and even phone calls on whichever device happens to be in front of me at the time, whether it’s Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
And for most things, that works well…
For example, if I receive a text message and read it on my Mac, that will also mark it as read on my iPhone and iPad. If I dismiss a notification on my Watch, that will also dismiss it from my iPhone. (Not that there isn’t room for improvement here, too.)
But there are two exceptions to this: Calendar and Reminder alerts.
My Apple Thunderbolt Display died recently. While I’m waiting to check out the new 38-inch LG monitor to see whether it ticks my boxes, I’m working directly on my MacBook Pro while using my 12.9-inch iPad Pro as a second monitor on my left (using Sidecar), while my iPhone sits on a wireless charging stand to my right. That means I have three Apple screens in front of me, and both Calendar and Reminder alerts pop up on all three.
That’s fine. Given I could be in front of only one of them at any given point, that’s how it should work. What’s not fine is that dismissing the alert on one device doesn’t do so for the others. So when I get an alert, I use the trackpad to dismiss the one on my Mac, then reach over to the left to dismiss the one on my iPad, and finally reach over to the right to dismiss the one on my iPhone.
That seems a silly gap in the ecosystem. If this year’s macOS update is to be a “Snow Leopard” one, focused more on bug fixes and tweaks than shiny new features, that would be a very sensible one to add to the list.
Do you agree? And do you have similar small annoyances of your own? Please take our poll and share yours in the comments.
