The Future Is Exhausting: Apple, Read The Fucking Room.

Sophia Leon S.

20 minutes ago

5 min read

The new iPhone is exactly what nobody needs or asked for right now. I think I'm done with the future... And I know that is a slightly inconvenient position to take when everyone around me is very excited about the newest, smartest, fastest, most technologically advanced thing humanity has managed to produce this week. But honestly? I am fucking exhausted.

I am exhausted by my phone. I am exhausted by notifications. I am exhausted by Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Slack, emails, news alerts, screen time reports telling me I spent six hours looking at my phone and then apparently expecting me to congratulate myself for reducing it by twelve minutes.

I am exhausted by opening my phone to check one thing and resurfacing forty-five minutes later having watched a stranger clean their fridge.

And after years of being told that technology was going to make our lives easier, more efficient, more connected, I think a growing number of us are quietly asking a very different question:

Can you please just leave us the fuck alone?

And then Apple announces the new iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, with a 7.6-inch internal display designed to give us more room to multitask, work, watch, create and generally do more things on one device. It starts at $1,999, because apparently the financial burden of being permanently connected was not quite enough…

And I understand why it's impressive. It is impressive. And I want it. Why wouldn't I, right? A giant screen in my pocket. Two apps side by side. More room to work. More room to watch. More room to... presumably never look away from my phone ever again.

But do we, ACTUALLY, really, REEEALLY, want this? Because culturally, I really don't think we do.

Gen Z is buying old flip phones, iPods, wired headphones and digital cameras. Millennials are reminiscing about candy-coloured iMacs and tiny iPhones with actual buttons. People are talking constantly about digital detoxes, deleting social media, turning off notifications, going offline, protecting their privacy and trying to get their attention back.

The strange thing is that the culture is moving backwards while the technology companies keep sprinting forwards. And I'm starting to wonder whether they have completely misunderstood what we're asking for.

We don't necessarily want a better smartphone. We want less smartphone. There is a huuuge difference. Somehow, along the way, our phones stopped being tools and became environments.They became our alarm clocks, calendars, cameras, banks, offices, televisions, dating lives, shopping centres, newspapers, social lives and tiny little portals into everyone else's existence.

They are in our bedrooms when we wake up.

They're in our hands while we eat.

They're beside us while we work.

They're with us when we walk.

They're in our pockets at dinner.

They're charging next to our beds.

And apparently the solution to this deeply “healthy arrangement” is to make the screen bigger.

I'm sorry, but… What the fuck are we doing?

I'm not asking for less technology because I hate technology. I'm asking for less because I like my life. I want to walk somewhere without documenting it. I want to have dinner without half my brain wondering what notifications I've missed. I want to have a conversation without a device sitting between us, quietly recording, tracking, pinging and predicting.

I want to be bored, actually bored. The kind of bored where your brain has to entertain itself. And this is where I think the tech industry has completely missed the cultural mood.

They keep asking: What else can we add? What else can AI do? What else can our watches hear? What else can our phones remember? What else can we automate? What else can we optimise? What else can we put on a screen?

How about instead we ask: What can we take away?

Apple has one of the richest design archives on earth. They have spent decades teaching us that good design is about deciding what belongs and what doesn't.

Steve Jobs once put the philosophy rather beautifully:

“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

And maybe that is exactly what feels so strange about where we are now. Apple became Apple by making technology feel simpler, more intuitive, more human. Now, when so many of us are desperate for less noise, less distraction and fewer reasons to stare at a screen, the answer seems to be: here is a much bigger screen.

So imagine this.

Instead of making a phone that gives us a larger portal into the internet, what if they made one designed around helping us spend less time in it? I understand the business behind this. But just hear me out.

A beautiful phone. Minimal. Almost boring. A phone that doesn't constantly demand something from you. A phone that makes communication easy but doesn't turn every waking moment into an opportunity for consumption. A phone designed around the radical idea that your attention belongs to you.

That would actually feel innovative to me. Because right now, every new device seems to be built around the assumption that what we really need is to consume more efficiently.

And then Apple launches a watch with Audio Intelligence that can capture and recap conversations and help you rewind what was said around you. Apple has built privacy controls around the feature, but the concept alone makes me want to lie down…

At some point, I don't want technology to remember my life for me. I want to remember my own life. I don't need an algorithm summarising the conversation I just had. I don't need a device reconstructing the moments I wasn't paying attention to. I don't need AI following me around like a very expensive intern who has been assigned to document my existence.

And this is where the whole thing starts feeling “slightly” dystopian.

Because we have collectively reached a point where our biggest technological problem isn't that technology isn't advanced enough. It is that we can't get away from it.

We don't need more access. We need boundaries.

We don't need more notifications. We need silence.

We don't need a phone that can do everything. We need a phone that doesn't make us feel like we should be doing everything.

And maybe that's why old technology suddenly feels so romantic. The flip phone wasn't revolutionary because it was better. It was revolutionary because it ended the conversation. You called someone. You texted someone. Then you put it away. There was no infinite feed waiting for you. No algorithm begging you to stay. No fifteen-year-old telling you what you should buy. No AI summarising your relationship. No little red bubble informing you that 47 people somewhere on the internet require your attention.

Just a phone.

And perhaps that's what so many of us are actually craving. Not the past. Just a fucking exit.

Exit from the expectation that we should always be reachable, always consuming, always responding, always optimising, always connected. Because, maaaan, I don't want a smarter life. I want a life where I can occasionally be stupidly, gloriously offline. I want to forget my phone exists. I want to miss something. I want to not know what happened on the internet for an afternoon and discover, miraculously, that I survived.

So no, Apple.

I don't want your biggest screen. I don't want another device that remembers more, hears more, tracks more, predicts more, or gives me another reason to stare at a screen.

I, actually, really, really, reeeeallyy, want less...

Less noise. Less tracking. Less scrolling. Less optimisation. Less fucking everything.

I want a phone that helps me live my life instead of turning my life into content, data, notifications and screen time. Because I am not sitting here desperately waiting for technology to find one more way into my day.

I am trying to get my day back.

And if that sounds anti-tech, maybe that's the point. What if the most revolutionary thing Apple could build right now is a reason to put the fucking thing down.