I suppose you own a car and solve all your personal logistics by driving (presumably in the US). That's a compromise I would not want to make just to get rid of the phone (a car seems much more annoying to deal with!)
I do own a car, and it can go anywhere, carrying many people and goods very quickly and cheaply with no reservation or app required. It's also available in the event of natural disaster when all the rentals vanish. My family woke up to an earthquake that led to a tsunami warning at midnight in 2016, and there are fires and other problems one can foresee...
I do appreciate subway systems and find them very convenient for moving myself around, but dislike the idea of hiring someone else's machine every time I need to purchase groceries for a family or take 3 boxes of hardware to some place...
It did function "somehow", but not as well as it functions now. Hailing a cab (or an unlicensed one) when it's cold or rains was a struggle. No food delivery. No bus notifications and maps routing.
Heck, it worked somehow before the Metro was dug by Stalin in the 1930s, but not as well as now.
So you're correct if you don't mind the quality of life.
I really don't get the food delivery thing. It's expensive as hell, slow, and mostly delivers a bunch of highly processed food you'd be better off not eating anyway, unless you're really starving. I've got far better things to do with my money than pay too much for bad, cold food.
Even during the entire 2020 Covid lockdown craziness (which was quite properly never really taken seriously here in Texas - even Austin!), we ordered food delivered exactly twice. All other food was either bought at the grocery store and cooked at home, or from restaurants (I actually miss being able to walk into any restaurant that was open and be instantly seated and served!)
> It's expensive as hell, slow, and mostly delivers a bunch of highly processed food you'd be better off not eating anyway
This depends on where you are! In Moscow, food delivery can be a 25 minute affair delivering you something from your favourite (vetted by you!) restaurant.
In Stockholm for example (at least when I used to live there), the number of restaurants that sign up for delivery is very low and you mostly just get shitty "Swedish pizza" (curry banana shrimp pizza, anyone?)
London is somewhere in between. Maybe it's just a function of city size, something something economies of scale.
So, it's safe to assume GP meant modern life with modern comforts, rather than "my oxygen is only available with an iCloud subscription".