Notifications - Why So Unreliable in the Apple Ecosystem?

[Buadhai]

I see many discussions here distributed across various subforms about problems with notifications: email, Messages, etc.

I see this as a long-standing problem that can't be pinned to any particular Apple OS or device.

For example:

We have a "smart" LG washing machine. It is supposed to send notifications (laundry done, problems, etc.) to my phone and my wife's phone. Today we were watching TV and my wife's phone received a notification that the laundry load needed to be rebalanced. I received no such notification. We rebalanced the load and started the washer. Some minutes later we both got a notification that the laundry again needed to rebalanced. We did that. Later, I got a notification that the laundry was done. My wife received no such notification.

I live in Thailand and regularly chat with an old friend who lives in Michigan. We started out with Skype, but I rarely got notified of incoming messages from him. (He's on an old laptop running Mint and a very old Samsung phone.) So, early in 2020 we switched to Zoom. At first I received notifications on my Mac and iPhone of incoming messages. Sometimes I got them on my Apple Watch. That has pretty much stopped. I rarely get notified of incoming Zoom messages. Oddly, the most reliable Zoom notifications come to my Apple Watch.

I use Messages to chat with my wife and my daughter. Whether or not I get notified of incoming messages is a real crap shoot. Most of the time I don't, on any of my devices. Sometimes I do.

I also use Prowl to receive notifications from three different Raspberry Pies (one of which is remote) and from two different Macs (one of which is remote). Prowl is solid when it comes to sending notifications to my iPhone and iPad. It makes a sound. It displays a banner and it badges the Prowl icon.

Why can't Zoom, Messages, Skype and LG ThinkQ be more like Prowl?

 

[Devin Breeding]

Hmmm I don’t experience any of these issues but I’ll admit the only apps I’m getting notifications from are email, messages, calendar and apple pay. Have you checked to make sure the third party apps you have are allowed to run in the background? I’d assume that effects push notifications.

 

[Blowback]

I see many discussions here distributed across various subforms about problems with notifications: email, Messages, etc.

I see this as a long-standing problem that can't be pinned to any particular Apple OS or device.

For example:

We have a "smart" LG washing machine. It is supposed to send notifications (laundry done, problems, etc.) to my phone and my wife's phone. Today we were watching TV and my wife's phone received a notification that the laundry load needed to be rebalanced. I received no such notification. We rebalanced the load and started the washer. Some minutes later we both got a notification that the laundry again needed to rebalanced. We did that. Later, I got a notification that the laundry was done. My wife received no such notification.

I live in Thailand and regularly chat with an old friend who lives in Michigan. We started out with Skype, but I rarely got notified of incoming messages from him. (He's on an old laptop running Mint and a very old Samsung phone.) So, early in 2020 we switched to Zoom. At first I received notifications on my Mac and iPhone of incoming messages. Sometimes I got them on my Apple Watch. That has pretty much stopped. I rarely get notified of incoming Zoom messages. Oddly, the most reliable Zoom notifications come to my Apple Watch.

I use Messages to chat with my wife and my daughter. Whether or not I get notified of incoming messages is a real crap shoot. Most of the time I don't, on any of my devices. Sometimes I do.

I also use Prowl to receive notifications from three different Raspberry Pies (one of which is remote) and from two different Macs (one of which is remote). Prowl is solid when it comes to sending notifications to my iPhone and iPad. It makes a sound. It displays a banner and it badges the Prowl icon.

Why can't Zoom, Messages, Skype and LG ThinkQ be more like Prowl?

My main issue is .....getting flooded by a slew of notifications which are 'yesterday'....and three or four or more days old....especially on my iPad Pro. All of my devices are correctly synched so I don't know what the issue is or why the servers can be so late. This is also a repeating issue.