This was super interesting!
People could just uninstall the apps they don’t like, cancel their mobile internet contract, and there you go. But I guess that is something you have to do yourself. Buying a new product for a new lifestyle seems to be the only way to go for most people.
It’s not the hardware device that is hacking our minds. It’s the software/website that’s doing that. Remove the software that is bad for you, and you’re done.
I was rather early with smartphones. I got a Freerunner when the iPhone came out. Then the Nokia N900, both Linux phones. But still… I’m definitely not looking for 3 hours at my smartphone. Maybe in a week, but even that is a stretch.
Taking notes. Making pictures. Recording voice notes. Route planning. Using Open Street Map tools to enrich the data. Take pictures of plants to know which ones they are. Listen to music. There are so many good use cases.
But apparently, most people use it to type messages on a tiny screen so that rich people get even more data from you. That’s not the device that’s doing that. It’s the user.
People could just uninstall the apps they don’t like
Unfortunately, it‘s not always that easy. Try to get any stock smartphone from the shelf and uninstall distracting stuff like the web browser. It‘s basically impossible without rooting the device and installing a custom OS. And this is something you can‘t expect a non-techie to do, even if they wanted to…
But I‘m totally with you on your notion, that all „bad“ software should be easily removable.
Most people use these as second or emergency phones.
