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iOS 15 Humane

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181–190 of 496 posts

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#181

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

It's well past midnight, I've been interacting with apps designed to maximize 'user engagement' since 8 PM. I don't have coherent thoughts, I'm opening irrelevant tabs habitually. This is not healthy. I have a problem. That problem is mindless browsing, and it feels engineered. Not saying you're wrong, just that your ideas don't work for me.

Even at that, Downtime is already a feature. Personally I'd want the mindless browsing feature on all the time, but it would be fairly trivial to assign it to Downtime same as other quality-of-life features already in the OS.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#182

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

I am not sure if this is entirely what you mean, but for a game Red Dead Redemption 2 can scratch this itch. The natural environment, ecosystem, and weather effects are amazing. You can easily just avoid the main game and just wander around the environment, and there are a lot of woods to walk in!

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#183

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

When I walk through the woods, it's like the environment scrubs my mind of accumulated exposure to mental poisoning. When I scroll a news feed, the platform tries to jam my mind full of the most saccharine palaver possible. I end up feeling less like a prism, and more like a pack animal.. Perhaps there's a midpoint

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#184
For me the only situation I consider "ok" for mindless browsing is while keeping and eye on the kids. Reading a book or anything else that requires concentration is impossible because you have to look up / intervene every x minutes.

The whole mobile online experience has become so bad, it's soul destroying. I don't go near social media anymore and prefer to just read interesting things. While not signed in to Google (because f*ck that), every search I do is met with a Google disclaimer I have to tap 3x to reach the bottom and tap once more to "agree" (no idea what I'm agreeing to). If you tap the wrong way (too quickly?) it zooms in and you have to use two fingers to zoom out again.

Then whatever site you end up has a cookie disclaimer, an "enter your email" popup and often even a third one with some promo crap. So often it's more than 5 fiddly taps just to get to the content and then you have to hope there's no paywall.

Infinite scroll is a complete horror show. I find myself mindlessly doom scrolling through job and real estate sites, tapping likes while I'm not even looking for a job or a house.

I can't quite live without smartphone (GPS, music, audiobooks ...) but I almost wish they were never invented.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#185

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

It's well past midnight, I've been interacting with apps designed to maximize 'user engagement' since 8 PM. I don't have coherent thoughts, I'm opening irrelevant tabs habitually. This is not healthy. I have a problem. That problem is mindless browsing, and it feels engineered. Not saying you're wrong, just that your ideas don't work for me.

I totally get it and often find myself doing the same. Mostly when I missed out on winding down in the evening in a better fashion. Then I visit the sites with the 'engineered engagement' and polarizing content and find myself quite literally taken for an emotional ride.

It's hard to find content that doesn't overstimulate you in that state. Sitcoms and chill twitch streams work so well exactly because the extent of what is happening is safe, predictable and confined, yet the process is slightly different every time.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#186
post #28

Meanwhile, today Microsoft gifted us a brand new "News & interests" area in the taskbar lobbying for our focus and attention. Successfully... I even had to google how to turn it off, and write this comment.

my dad was asking me how to get rid of that yesterday because it was annoying him. i noticed that he also had the cortana search box on the left of the taskbar and asked if he ever used it and he said no. all these years it's just been there taking up valuable space and then 'new & interests' appears out nowhere last week and starts talking up even more valuable space. my poor dad had about 8 programs open but there were all squashed into the middle of the taskbar. makes me wonder about how many other people are living in these awful conditions

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#187
post #145
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you make the assumption that a device with freedom would be a device to worry about? This is exactlty what the op is saying. The Apple narrative of "we have full control over your device and your software for your own good" is horrible and worrying. I'm not gonna make a parallel about Apple source of inspiration but it doesn't scream creativity, freedom and certainly not democracy.

Democracy is about choice, including the right to make choices you disagree with. You can choose to use an iOS device, or you can chose not to. I choose to use one, and I like the way it works. You or others like you want to take that choice away from me.

So you agree that iPhones should be used in whatever way the user wants, including using a different app store? I mean, it is a choice that you disagree with but for some reason it should be taken away. Why?

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#189

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

I wouldn't compare it to a walk through the woods, more like walking through a busy street with angry people and advertisements screaming at you all the time ;)

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time Are you implying that Linux doesn't work 99% of the time? If so, you are mistaken. I'm running Linux for me and my relatives without issues for years. I'm not a programmer/hacker. Just choose the hardware designed for it (exactly like in the case of Apple).

Ohh come on. I am not against linux but to say it works flawlessly is ridiculous. My last try with it a few years was the most ridiculous. If i plugged my bamboo stylus, the screen would just go all crazy, as soon as i unplugged it, back to normal. Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux (ubuntu lts) i couldn’t even plug it in (and took me a while to find out that was the problem as it installed everything fin…

> Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux

Here comes your problem (which I actually mentioned in my above post). Choose hardware designed for Linux if you want it to really work. Why don't you complain that your Windows installation does not work well on a Macbook?

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