Apple making "Theater Mode" for their phones, so people can text during movies

No, Apple. Do not encourage this crap. “Dimming” the screen won’t stop it from being rude.

I hope people are just making the wrong assumptions, because what they describe sounds dumb. I’m trying to think of some other, useful way a phone could behave in “theater mode”.

Like maybe the screen doesn’t light up at all for notifications, the phone only vibrates! Except that’s dumb because what’s the point of a vibration if you’re not going to then check the phone. So yeah, I don’t know, but fingers crossed the guesses at the functionality are way off.

I would now like to propose ‘theater mode’ for punching people in the face. It’s like regular punching people in the face, except now we shout ‘stop texting during the movie, jackass’ before punching them in the face, to wild applause.

Even phone vibrations are disturbing in a theater, especially if the phone is in someone’s pocket bumping against the armrest. I hate it.

“BZZZZZZZ BZZZZZZZ BZZZZZZZZ BZZZZZZZZ”

If they called it ‘sleeping baby’ mode, I’d be all over it.

It’s 3 am, and you are rocking a fussy baby to sleep while you browse some forum posts, because it’s 3am and what else are you going to do with this time you aren’t sleeping. A dimmer screen with no noises would be perfect for that, so as not to disturb fussy baby.

Theater mode should be a capacitor that discharges into the hand of anyone reaching for their phone in a darkened theater. Thereby stunning them into submission. But silently.

Yeah, a screen not being lit as fuck doesn’t stop it from being annoying when people next to you check/use their phones during a movie. We’re simply primed to respond to things happening in our peripheral vision - and someone fiddling around with his/her device is just being that.

I find that turning my brightness all the way down (and that’s real, real dim on my phone) and notifications off works great when I’m in that situation.

On second thought, it would be perfect for Apple to take that, give it a name, and have tech bloggers wet themselves over how “daring” they are, how creative, and how it’s going to Change Everything. Again.

It takes courage. :v

Will Apple sell paddles so I can whip people who do this?

I’m so sick of cell phones. The punishment for using one in a car with your hand(s) for calling or texting while driving should be a LOT harsher than it is. I’m sick of people driving like ass-hats because they are concentrating on the freaking cell phone. I hate waiting at an F’ing red light for 60 seconds and then the light turns green the other F’ers who are waiting in front of me are checking out Instagram or the latest snapchat crap.

I hate cell phones…not to mention possible cancer bullshit from using them.

I hate my wife making me keep one on me at all times…drives me insane.

I’m already more or less sworn off movie theatres because of this annoyance. Android already has dimming, it doesn’t significantly reduce the distraction.

All hail the home theater.

Oh, savage.

The only way me and my wife will go to the movies these days is if it’s IMAX + stadium seating (raised seats and boomier audio minimize phone disruptions) or like a Tuesday night where we’re almost guaranteed to be pretty lonely in a theater. Otherwise, it’s pointless; at first I was all “Git off my lawn!” in ascribing the behavior to kids, but it’s everyone. No one seems to care that they paid to see a movie these days; spoken conversations, chatting on phones, whatever - people just treat theaters the same as they’d treat their living room.

Hell, even at home we have a “no phone!” policy when we’re using our basement theater.

All of this is probably a strong indicator that we’re old.

I saw Rogue One at 1030 on a Thursday morning at one of the busiest cinemas in London. When the adverts started their were 4 of us in the theatre. A few more turned up later. We had no one at all in front of us, and no one within 20 seats behind or to the side.

My wife and I similarly choose a theatre that is in something of a wasteland - luxury mall with limited residential around it, slightly higher than average prices, worknights. Normally we’ll be one of around 10 couples. It’s tolerable for big screen or 3D movies, but there still is a fair share of assholes.

Steve Jobs would never have allowed this.

I mean, is there a large market asking for this feature?

Perhaps this is just hype.

I find all this negatively tinged speculation about a feature no one knows anything about to be rather weird. For all we know, this rumoured Theatre Mode might have something to do with displaying dark mode UI. To which I would say, “Hallelujah!”

Looks like we were right-ish, premature to panic about a feature before knowing what it does:

MacRumors: ‘Theater Mode’ Coming to Apple Watch

The most important new feature is a “Theater Mode” that’s designed to let customers quickly mute the screen on their Apple Watch and disable raise to wake, preventing the screen from lighting up with arm movement.

With Theater Mode enabled, customers will still receive haptic feedback for each incoming notification, and information can be viewed by tapping the screen or pressing down on the Digital Crown.

This is actually a really good feature, that’s making devices more theater friendly. It leaked as part of iOS because I assume there’s a control for it from your phone as well (just like you can turn on Do Not Distrub from either the watch or the phone), but it’s just a Watch feature to keep the screen off as you wiggle in your seat, nothing that’s going to make phones more obnoxious.