Device Orientation: Useless Orientations

Question

A couple of my classes are subscribed to notifications for when the device orientation changes. Other times, I'm directly checking the orientation with

[[UIDevice currentDevice] orientation]

As most of you are aware, in iOS the following orientations exist:

typedef enum {
   UIDeviceOrientationUnknown,
   UIDeviceOrientationPortrait,
   UIDeviceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown,
   UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft,
   UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeRight,
   UIDeviceOrientationFaceUp,
   UIDeviceOrientationFaceDown
} UIDeviceOrientation;

Is there an application-wide method of disabling FaceUp, FaceDown, and Unknown from ever being reported? These orientation updates are useless in 95% of applications, with Unknown being useless in 99.9% of applications.

Right now I'm just ignoring those orientations (whether I see them from directly checking the orientation or from getting a notification), but it's causing annoyances in certain situations.

Anyway, I'm guessing there isn't a way to stop the "useless" orientations from being reported, but I figured it was worth asking. I probably just have to keep handling them, right?

Edit:
Okay, obviously disagreeing with Apple is a sin based on the number of downvotes I've already received.

However, please explain to me how receiving a notification telling you that the device orientation is unknown can be helpful? How is this different from not receiving any notification at all? When would knowing that the device orientation is "unknown" be of help compared to not being sent any notification? I'm willing to retract the useless statement if I see a couple realistic use cases where knowing the orientation is unknown is not... useless.

Answer 1

They're there for a reason. At Apple they don't make useless things (except Xcode).

While it's not possible to directly modify methods not to return them, you can ignore them - what's wrong with that?

If you are really annoyed and really want UIDevice not to return these values, you can jailbreak your iPhone/iPad and hook - [UIDevice orientation] using MobileSubstrate.