Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This
Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This
The devices have become our constant
companions. This was not the plan.
By Cal Newport Mr. Newport is a computer scientist and author. Jan. 25, 2019
·
Smartphones are our
constant companions. For many of us, their glowing screens are a ubiquitous
presence, drawing us in with endless diversions, like the warm ping of social
approval delivered in the forms of likes and retweets, and the algorithmically
amplified outrage of the latest “breaking” news or controversy. They’re in our
hands, as soon as we wake, and command our attention until the final moments
before we fall asleep.
Steve Jobs would not
approve.
In 2007, Mr. Jobs took
the stage at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and introduced the
world to the iPhone. If you watch the full speech, you’ll be surprised by how he
imagined our relationship with this iconic invention, because this vision is so
different from the way most of us use these devices now.
In the remarks, after
discussing the phone’s interface and hardware, he spends an extended amount of
time demonstrating how the device leverages the touch screen before detailing
the many ways Apple engineers improved the age-old process of making phone
calls. “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever made,” Mr. Jobs exclaims at one point.
“The killer app is making calls,” he later adds. Both lines spark thunderous
applause. He doesn’t dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s
internet connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address.
The
presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more constrained
iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade later. For
example, he doesn’t focus much on apps. When the iPhone was first introduced
there was no App Store, and this was by design. As Andy Grignon, an original
member of the iPhone team, told me when I was researching this topic, Mr. Jobs
didn’t trust third-party developers to offer the same level of aesthetically
pleasing and stable experiences that Apple programmers could produce. He was
convinced that the phone’s carefully designed native features were enough. It
was “an iPod that made phone calls,” Mr. Grignon said to me.
Mr. Jobs seemed to
understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of
activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t
seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to
take experiences we already found important and make them better.
The minimalist vision
for the iPhone he offered in 2007 is unrecognizable today — and that’s a shame.
Under what I call the
“constant companion model,” we now see our smartphones as always-on portals to
information. Instead of improving activities that we found important before
this technology existed, this model changes what we pay attention to in the
first place — often in ways designed to benefit the stock price of
attention-economy conglomerates, not our satisfaction and well-being.
We’ve become so used to
the constant companion model over the past decade that it’s easy to forget its
novelty. As a computer scientist who also writes about the impact of technology
on culture, I think it’s important to highlight the magnitude of this shift, as
it seems increasingly clear to me that Mr. Jobs probably got it right the first
time: Many of us would be better off returning to his original minimalist
vision for our phones.
Practically
speaking, to be a minimalist smartphone user means that you deploy this device
for a small number of features that do things you value (and that the phone
does particularly well), and then outside of these activities, put it away.
This approach dethrones this gadget from a position of constant companion down
to a luxury object, like a fancy bike or a high-end blender, that gives you
great pleasure when you use it but doesn’t dominate your entire day.
To succeed with this approach, a useful
first step is to remove from your smartphone any apps that make money from your
attention. This includes social media, addictive games and newsfeeds that
clutter your screen with “breaking” notifications. Unless you’re a cable news
producer, you don’t need minute-by-minute updates on world events, and your
friendships are likely to survive even if you have to wait until you’re sitting
at your home computer to log on to Facebook or Instagram. In addition, by
eliminating your ability to publish carefully curated images to social media
directly from your phone, you can simply be present in a nice moment, free from
the obsessive urge to document it.
Turning our attention to
professional activities, if your work doesn’t absolutely demand that you be
accessible by email when away from your desk, delete the Gmail app or
disconnect the built-in email client from your office servers. It’s
occasionally convenient to check in when out and about, but this occasional convenience
almost always comes at the cost of developing a compulsive urge to monitor your
messages constantly. If you’re not sure whether your work requires phone-based
email, don’t ask; just delete the apps and wait to see whether it causes a
problem — many people unintentionally exaggerate their need to constantly be
available.
Once you’ve stripped
away the digital chatter clamoring for your attention, your smartphone will
return to something closer to the role originally conceived by Mr. Jobs. It
will become a well-designed object that comes out occasionally throughout your
day to support — not subvert — your efforts to live well: It helps you find
that perfect song to listen to while walking across town on a sunny fall
afternoon; it loads up directions to the restaurant where you’re meeting a good
friend; with just a few swipes, it allows you to place a call to your mom — and
then it can go back into your pocket, or your bag, or the hall table by your
front door, while you move on with the business of living your real-world life.
Early in his 2007
keynote, Mr. Jobs said, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” What he
didn’t add, however, was the follow-up promise that “tomorrow, we’re going to
reinvent your life.” The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but it was never meant to
be the foundation for a new form of existence in which the digital increasingly
encroaches on the analog. If you return this innovation to its original limited
role, you’ll get more out of both your phone and your life.
Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at
Georgetown and the author of the forthcoming book “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.”
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