Ever want to hide away, lock the doors and just get on with what you’re doing without any distractions? Sounds like you want Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Or more specifically, one of its newest features: Do Not Disturb. The big question: why oh why is this not on iOS already?
A case study: Only last night, I was watching Netflix on my iPad (Rounders starring Matt Damon, if you must know). I was enjoying the movie, but kept getting distracted by little drop-in notifications from Words With Friends or Facebook or what have you – hanging there over the film like noisy kids at the cinema.
“Tell you what this needs,” I said to myself. “This needs some way of temporarily turning all that stuff off.” Sounds like Apple’s way ahead of me, though. It’s just updated the third version of its Mac OS X Mountain Lion developer preview to include a feature that lets you do just that.
Mountain Lion: An iPhone in your Mac
Do Not Disturb is a little toggle in the Notification Centre that lets you halt the incessant influx of alerts. Switch it on and your Mac will display a little moon symbol in the top bar. And you’ll be left alone.
Apple’s on a mission to amalgamate the best features of both Mac OS X and iOS into one seamless experience, but it seems odd that this feature would make it onto your computer before your iOS device. Still, you’ve got to assume that if it’s in place on one, it won’t be long before it makes the jump.
Maybe we’ll see Do Not Disturb as part of iOS 6? Here’s hoping. While we’re at it, here’s what else we want to see from the next iteration of the iPhone and iPad’s OS:
