Other anyone else have iphone fatigue?

[capamac]

Yes the smartphone used to be a pure tool for the user. Its usefulness (communication/productivity/entertainment) combined with its portability made it possibly the most useful tool in history. It was so useful and portable that it became glued to people's hands, acting as a nearly 24/7 open portal between the user's mind and the world. Many developers saw this opportunity to both gather information about the user, as well as manipulate the user--for the developers' gain. Developers became the users; users became the used.

Of course, not every exchange between developer and user is nefarious. Plenty are still transparent and mutually beneficial. But mixed in with the transparent exchanges are the opaque--the user tools that are secretly developer tools. It's a game of spotting the wolf in sheep's clothing (a good trick is to look at the business model). It's those that we need to scrutinize to know what they're truly taking and what they're truly giving/forcing.

The smartphone used to be innocent; now the proverbial wolves are in our pockets. My hope is more and more users wake up and take back fuller control of their lives.

I would argue flint tools were vastly more critical in human history than the iPhone. :^)

Flint - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[subjonas]

I would argue flint tools were vastly more critical in human history than the iPhone. :^)

Flint - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Haha it's a tie.
A good argument could be made for many historical tools, and fire-making is definitely up there along with probably the wheel and the blade. But there are different ways to think about "most useful" other than most critical. The smartphone wouldn't be here without flint and many other tools, but one way I think the smartphone surpasses all the others is simply in the amount of time that it's used by individuals (although I just finished implying that much of the time it's the phone that uses us, but setting that aside...). I suppose it's a quantity over quality type of definition of "useful", although some quality is certainly in there too, such as long distance communication. Although I'm reminded that most of the smartphone's usefulness is dependent on communication networks, so maybe that has to be included with the smartphone as one big system.
But yes, there are certainly more critical tools such as flint.

 

[burgman]

Yes, I do.

All I want is a small, light, pocketable iPhone to do the essentials ...

And every year all the options seem to get a little thicker or heavier or add more stuff I don't want or care about.

I'm nearly into the camp of wanting an iPhone that runs WatchOS at this point.
That's how ridiculous it has gotten.

The reality check for me is every time I look at the privacy report and wonder who the hell are these people and companies sucking up my daily life. Do I turn my phone off, of course not.

 

[al_berto39]

the snail paced incremental updates, the AI fiasco, intentionally grotesque design, recent price gouging (of apple products in general) - anyone else have general iPhone & Apple fatigue and just losing all interest?

I have **** apple policies fatigue.
Lately, the 45gb of iOS + System data out of my 128GB of storage, that is managed by the system and will be removed when needed, except it doesn't.