There’s a new iPhone. Again. Improbably, we are on the 17th iteration (give or take) of the product that single-handedly ruins our lives every day with incessant vibrations alerting us to some horrifying calamity, plus every song in the Bruce Springsteen back catalog. Coming up with new features for the never-ending information machines we all keep in our pockets isn’t easy, but this time, Apple managed to develop a big (or should I say small) one. There’s now a thinner iPhone Air, which is being marketed as the thinnest iPhone ever. These gadgets have never exactly been gargantuan, so it’s kind of like identifying the tiniest grain of sand in the desert. Still, people around the world are fascinated by the sheer lack of phone here.
Technology, design, and art are all trending toward a certain scarcity model, prepping us for a lack of bells and whistles, as though both your parents are unemployed and they want you to expect fewer trips to Disneyland. Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive. Sure, iPhones haven’t gotten cheaper, but they have certainly gotten … lesser. The iPhone Air is so small, I feel like I’ll sit on it and it will slide seamlessly up my rectum, never to be seen again. For some, I’m sure losing your device inside your bowels might be a feature, but I think it’s a rather uncomfortable bug.
This complaint feels like 2009 again. It was entertaining to me the period of time of younger people complaining about millennial grey/beige. A complete rejection of millennial minimalism to make way for popping colors and crowded tables of purchased knick knacks. Now it’s back to minimalism, spending won’t make you happy. Whatever the latest cope trend is
Between the ugly lump on the back of these and the horrid Liquid Ass interface this is possibly the ugliest iPhone they’ve ever released.
what is this idea of “thin phone”??? A thick phone could fit more battery and specs and better camera
people around the world are fascinated by the sheer lack of phone here
My thoughts exactly
I mean, I don’t know who the target demo is that looks at an iPhone and says “cool, but it’s just too thick.”
Y’all appear to have forgotten what phones felt like before things got to this extreme.
It was for ergonomics; it’s easier and more comfortable to hold a phone when it fits better in your hand. The phablet phase broke this for most people by making the screens super big, so they tried to correct by making the phones thinner.
A reasonable size phone that is thin enough would be perfect, but marketing doesn’t like it when they can’t advertise a bigger screen number, or a smaller thickness, so here we are.
Easily the most comfortable phone to hold that I’ve owned was the Nokia I got in 1998 (my first cell, in college). It was heavy, the battery life was shit and it still had an antenna, but the grip was nice.
I don’t see anyone in public who doesn’t keep their phone in a case now, so the actual thickness of a naked phone is irrelevant to the final experience day to day.
No, exactly. That’s the problem. You can’t really advertise ergonomics without it looking really different; so everyone just says “wider and thinner than ever before” and calls it a day. So we’re here; with everything the wrong size and shape.
The most comfortable phone I ever used was similar to the middle phone in this picture; except the buttons were raised even higher, and the middle key wasn’t a scroll wheel, just another simple button. It was also thinner, and had less rounded edges.
In our group chat my two other friends have exhanged literally 800 messages trying to figure out which of the newest models is best for them as if there any difference between them or between the few years old ones they already have. I literally spent less time considering the purchase of my house.
Poetry
People who dislike their phones so much should stop using them. I’m very happy with mine.
once you get out of social media you realize the problem are those , no the phones.
I love being able to talk good quality pictures of my kids without having to even think about it or sharing them with their grandmother.
I enjoy when my home screen presents me with a nice portrait taken years ago that I have forgotten about. live photos are an amazing detail that often without any intention capture a funny or cute scene.
The phones is boring but thy are also a canvas. look the kind of covers that teenage girls use.
the problems with phones are not the phones. it’s companies taking advantage of them to steal every second of attention from us
Did you read the article though? It is actually about minimalism
yes, but that part is even dumber and didn’t wan to talk much of it.
so they sell like 5 different iphones and one of them is marketed as the thinnest. it is apple trying to widen their almost saturated market, not a conspiracy.
Social media is a big part of the problem but still a symptom of the same systemic issues that phones are a symptom off.
Modern Phones are pocket-sized personal computers that are heavily restricted in what users can do, heavily tailored to what consumption our corporate overlords want to maintain (social media being an example, predatory games another).
Just like social media (facebook) is near impossible to avoid because all your local businesses don’t have a website and only inform and communicate trough a social media page (thanks my partner still has an account) you cannot simply not own a phone because scanning qr codes is now often a required part of participating in society, often unexpectedly.
I still have Instagram but what I did that helped was to uninstall the app and just use the website as a pwa, no notifications or anything, now I can open it every few days to see the memes my wife sends me and see what local activities are happening in town
Aren’t you using social media right now?
Forums are only sort of social media
There is less focus on users and more on topics, and they have more practical uses than social media
But still, Lemmy is social media, I guess.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
The iPhone Air is so small, I feel like I’ll sit on it and it will slide seamlessly up my rectum, never to be seen again.
There’s a 6.9” (nice) display joke here, but it’s too early in the morning to fit one in.
I love articles that use “phone” and “iPhone” interchangeably. Like, jfc.
“iPhone” gets more clicks than “Pixel phone” I guess.
Literally all phones right now are fugly monochromatic bricks. Even the foldables, they’re just thicker bricks.
edit: The Nothing Phone looks kinda cool though last time I checked
When is the year of the linux phone
Just after we’ve nailed fusion.
Especially from a tech critic.
Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive.
That’s exactly my style. Literally all my clothing fulfills that criteria. It’s either beige, green, or some variation of brown, very spartan, no decorations at all, and very unobtrusive. I think i could go into a forest and fit right into the plants, aesthetically.
Removed by mod
Did you read the piece?
