iPhone: Two Months In
I bought an iPhone two months ago. So far, it seems like a good decision.
- My phone screen time has gone down to an average of less than 1 hour per day.[1]
- I’m surprised at how far I can get without any App Store downloads.[2]
- I have yet to activate iCloud.[3] It (pleasantly) surprises me that Apple allows this to be optional.
- Automation via the Shortcuts app is pretty great.[4]
I thought it would be more of a struggle to resist the pull of Apple’s ecosystem, but so far I haven’t had any problems keeping Apple at arm’s length despite owning one of their devices.
Footnotes
Of course my laptop screen time has gone up significantly, but that was the intended effect. One of my goals was to get out of the mobile ecosystem as much as possible and spend more time on devices I control. ↩︎
You can setup Fastmail with minimal effort using iOS-native mail, calendar, and reminders apps. iOS’s support for open standards like iCAL is surprisingly great out-of-the-box. I have downloaded a few apps, but so far haven’t needed to buy any. ↩︎
Backing things up encourages me to feel like my device is “safe” and can be relied upon, which increases dependence. The whole goal of this experiment is to avoid dependence on the mobile ecosystem as much as possible, so I avoid backup solutions like iCloud intentionally. So far the only backup I have needed is for photos and videos, that that is handled by Ente. ↩︎
Example: My phone automatically turns airplane mode on and off when I join or leave a Wi-Fi network. My battery likes this; staying connected to cell towers sucks a huge amount of battery life compared to Wi-Fi. Since Wi-Fi calling works reliably on iOS, I now have a nearly seamless way to remain connected, while increasing battery longevity. ↩︎
Other Posts
- Next: Systemd Targets and Dependencies — 2026-01-25
- Previous: iPhone — 2025-11-13