[davidkatz]

I'd wager to say that I do. I'll give you a concrete example. People order goods, and I want to send them a "Your order has shipped!" notification. People who paid for something want to know that it has shipped and is on route to them. When I give them a push notifications permissions dialogue, they assume I'm going to bomb them with promotional material. I'm not, and they're missing out on a better experience.

One workaround is to better explain what notifications are for, but I've thrown days of work at designing better notifications permissions funnels. Lovely graphics, succinct messages that explain exactly what you're going to get, and it helps a little, but not enough. People are so negatively impressed by notifications, they often almost reflexively deny permissions.

[PanMan]

And you think allowing all pushes will fix this? I assume it will only make it worse. Not for your app, but by all the other apps that will send a million pushes.

[davidkatz]

I understand, and that's why it's tragic. I and my audience needs to suffer because other developers abuse the system. I'm calling into question whether there is not a better way.

[krichman]

It only does the popup after you try to activate them, yes? Why not allow the user to turn them on with a button and not use them until then? "Hey this app is a lot better with push notifications, tap this to turn them on. A dialog will appear, tap 'Allow' to get notices etc. etc."

You said elsewhere that ~40% of users assume your app will spam them, but you don't know it's not ~40% of users simply don't want push notifications even from "benevolent" applications.