It is not a shift from the spec: as I said in bug 404658 four years ago, the spec doesn't cover this situation at all. And even if it did, that would be a poor excuse for an API allowing both an icon and text, but ignoring the text!
When we designed Notify OSD, the only hardware-response notifications we considered were volume and brightness, and both of those just happened to involve meters rather than text. The wi-fi, Bluetooth, and display use cases make much more sense with text.
It is not a shift from the spec: as I said in bug 404658 four years ago, the spec doesn't cover this situation at all. And even if it did, that would be a poor excuse for an API allowing both an icon and text, but ignoring the text!
When we designed Notify OSD, the only hardware-response notifications we considered were volume and brightness, and both of those just happened to involve meters rather than text. The wi-fi, Bluetooth, and display use cases make much more sense with text.