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by ibn_khaldun 1379 days ago
This was a nice, brief informative and insightful blog post.

As a business model I understand what Apple is doing and can register the strategy as calculated. As an Apple consumer, I am not that interested.

Sometime after inheriting a pair of AirPod Pros and an Apple Watch I started to feel strange. Then I booted OpenBSD on my own hardware for the first time the other day, straight into the shell and I feel changed by how brutal (as in architecture, aesthetics) the experience was. I find it distracting even to use my MacBook now. The colors, the textures, etc. I just feel different now.

Apple is offering a lot of convenience, apparently. The watch is convenient. The AirPods that dig into my ear canals and make me mistake audiobooks and podcasts for my own thoughts are…disturbing…but convenient as a Bluetooth headset?

As a consumer and user of these devices I just feel somewhere between recognizing these new conveniences but being disturbed by them and distracted even after some time.
1 comments
CharlesW 1379 days ago
> The AirPods that dig into my ear canals and make me mistake audiobooks and podcasts for my own thoughts…

Neat, is that an iOS 16 feature?

But seriously, there are things you can do to reclaim your attention span. Here are a few:

https://medium.com/make-time/six-years-with-a-distraction-fr...

https://hulry.com/ios-15-focus-mode/

https://www.wired.com/story/grayscale-ios-android-smartphone...

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ibn_khaldun 1379 days ago
I’ve actually been in the process of doing something similar to what’s described in the Medium article. I’ve tried to grayscale thing out before too but I switch back after some time.

I think what I’m getting out for myself is more so a UX issue? I’m not sure. It’s not a matter of attention span with me specifically. But the look and feel of certain Apple devices as a whole makes me feel like someone who I’d hate to become. I could still see myself using an iPad or a Mac mini or something like that, because I’ve taking a liking for some of the things those devices have to offer for specific tasks.

But I would love for my phone to just be a concrete brick that can spit out thermal printed slips of paper with messages on it as text messaging and emails. And if only voice calls were a distributed mesh of Solo cups and strings.

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CharlesW 1379 days ago
> Apple devices as a whole makes me feel like someone who I’d hate to become.

Definitely reason enough to avoid them. I sometimes feel nostalgic for the look/sound/vibe of early personal computing. Yesterday I watched this and briefly contemplated how it would be if computing today looked more like AppleWorks and chonky keyboards instead of black mirrors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xtBspMixHk

> But I would love for my phone to just be a concrete brick that can spit out thermal printed slips of paper with messages on it as text messaging and emails. And if only voice calls were a distributed mesh of Solo cups and strings.

Not quite what you're describing, but this brings Brazil to mind for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU

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