Your iPhone Can Really Kill You!

Poorly Done Things

Your life is worth less than fifteen minutes of a good programmer’s time at Apple. At least for Apple and many others. Learn how.

Shake It Off?

Shaking your iPhone in 2007 to undo an action while walking, dazzled, through the streets of San Francisco might have seemed funny and fun. Doing the same in 2021 with an iPhone that costs 14 times the Brazilian monthly minimum wage—especially if you drop it in the process—feels quite the opposite (not that it wasn’t already).

Of course, there was always a better interface solution than this, and Apple, now focused only on giant iPhones, eventually implemented it. The result? Today, in addition to shaking your phone, you may try touching the screen with three fingers and wait for the software to understand what you and the hardware have already figured out.

Timers

Now, have you ever tried setting more than one timer on your iPhone in 2021?

Like… while cooking, you need a timer for the carrot and another for the courgette. At the same time, you also need to know when it’s time to give your child another dose of medicine. Trivial, but your R$ 14,000 iPhone (approximately US$ 2,700) can do nothing for you. Only one timer has ever been available for happy iPhone owners.

Alarms

The whole thing can be even simpler.

Imagine that at the turn of the year, you want to set an alarm for 00:00 so you know when to hug and fraternise with your neighbours. All this while your iPhone is filming “the joy of a fresh start and a new stage in the history of humanity that follows this calendar.”

You will discover, in the worst possible way, that as soon as the alarm goes off, your iPhone will automatically stop recording, without asking, without warning, and without any sign that it has happened. You’ve lost the footage, and there’s no way to ask the whole world to rewind to midnight so you can re-record it.

The truth is, we are not in a Hollywood movie, and not all of us are in Las Vegas.

The Alert of Death

Going a little further, leaving countless other examples aside, we finally arrive at the dreaded modal low battery alert.

It’s your son’s first step. His first attempt might actually work. It’s exciting. It’s beautiful. It’s a unique moment in his life, in yours, and in the lives of everyone who loves him. You want to capture this memory forever—it deserves to be recorded forever. After all, it’s your son. What could be more important?

Well, for Apple, plenty of things are.

If you have an iPhone and want to capture your child’s first step—or even just take a picture—you had better hope your battery isn’t at the percentage that triggers the alert of death (which, as I will explain later, can be quite literal).

Phone Call? Yes. Battery Alert? No?

What’s the logic here?

Phone Calls Are So Cringe

Something that made perfect sense in 2007: when a call came in, it took over the entire screen, demanding full attention. After all, it was the iPhone—a phone. That’s what phones do, right?

But it’s 2021, and I much prefer the current option, where I can choose between a full-screen call alert or a simple notification.

I always opt for the notification. I barely make traditional calls anymore, so I have set my phone to receive calls only from contacts—and even then, only when I’m not in a Focus Mode (formerly Do Not Disturb).

Thank you, Apple! From the bottom of my heart.

(This even makes me want to pay US$ 99 [almost R$ 540] for the privilege of publishing a free app in your store for another year. Just kidding—I don’t feel like that at all.)

System Modals: When Software Thinks It Is More Important Than You

The term “modal” is used when an app demands your attention, insisting that you must stop everything and respond before continuing. The app swears it can’t go on without your immediate focus—as if it’s more important than anything else in your life.

But worse than a “modal” alert is a “system modal.”

(Yes… now the article really begins. So wake up your neighbour, because this is where it gets good!)

A “system modal” is an abrupt interruption that requires your immediate response—at the system level. In other words, your entire phone is completely hijacked until you acknowledge the message. Nothing else on your phone will function until you tap one of the tiny buttons.

If it were just a regular “modal,” you could simply close it and mutter a few choice words about the developers. But no—this is an operating system modal. And when the OS itself crashes your entire experience just because it thinks it’s more important than you, it makes you wonder: What goes through the minds of those who designed this? Do they really believe your life is worth less than a phone battery about to hit 20%?

When It Can Be Fatal

Not everyone has the “luxury” of a car with Apple CarPlay or the ability to install a third-party multimedia system. Many rely on cheap phone mounts clipped to their car’s air vents—or worse, motorcycle couriers in Brazil often have no safe way to secure their phones.

So you’re driving, using Waze for navigation. Everything’s fine—until your iPhone decides that nothing in the world is more important than warning you about your 20%, 10%, or 5% battery.

Instead of a subtle notification or a status bar indicator, you get a tiny modal alert with tiny buttons, designed in such a way that they’re almost impossible to tap. Now imagine trying to dismiss it while driving at 80 km/h.

Because Tim and Craig believe this alert is more important than your life, you must now take your eyes off the road to deal with it. Your hands fumble for the tiny, unresponsive button. Your focus shifts from driving. You—and the people around you—are at risk.

How Much Is Life Worth?

Year after year, I repeat the same appeal.

“It shouldn’t be that hard,” I imagine telling Apple’s engineers.
“Give me the code—I even know where to change it!”

It would take, at most, fifteen minutes to replace the alert of death with a graceful notification.

And that’s the real tragedy: your life isn’t even worth fifteen minutes of an Apple engineer’s time.

Notes as of February 2025

• Since iOS 17, it has been possible to set multiple timers. (We are indeed living in an age of wonders! Ah yes, Apple “Intelligence” at work, I presume?)
• The prices mentioned in the article are from September 2021; as of February 2025, things have only gotten worse. (Thanks Tim! Thanks governments!)
• Apple has still done nothing about system modals, and I’ve even discovered a few more—like the one that suggests you turn on Wi-Fi (even when you’re on the motorway) to “improve location accuracy,” among others.
• The “spoken directions” in Apple Maps are still forcibly tied to the same language as your iPhone’s Siri. If, like me, you use the interface and Siri in one language but want navigation instructions in another, there’s no way to change it. Other mapping apps allow this just fine.
• For developers, MapKit provides directions as plain spoken text in the configured iPhone UI language rather than structured data, meaning you’re stuck with the system’s language and can’t customise how directions are presented. ***
• Apple Maps can’t handle the heat in Brazil (and probably not even in California) and keeps turning the screen off just when you most need to see the map—if your phone gets too hot.
• While driving in Brazil, the iPhone keeps overheating and going into high-temperature mode. (Well, no one told you to always have air conditioning available, did they?)

*** Unless, like me, you build your own app to translate from English (the language I use on my iPhone) into structured instructions and then into Portuguese (my native language). I created mine to fill a gap Apple hasn’t addressed. It’s highly specific, designed for this exact workflow, and not built to scale—making it unfeasible for the App Store. But it works well, even alway displaying the temperature, current time, and the name of the neighbourhood I am in, which is especially useful in large cities.