JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 15ON EXCESSIVE PHONE USE
“Some users, primarily focused on their
kids, feel that their kids are using their
devices too much. However, as we look
at it, it’s also the parent that is using
them too much. We all are, or many of
us are.
Apple has never wanted to maximize
user time. We’ve never been about that.
We’re not motivated to do that from a
business point of view and we’re
certainly not motivated from a values
point of view. What we want to do is
give you a tool that empowers you to do
things you couldn’t do otherwise. We
want to enable things for your life, and
empower you to have experiences that
you couldn’t have.
“It is clear that there are certain apps
that people can get in the mindset of
just scrolling through mindlessly,
continually picking up their phones to
see what is happening at this second.
“So, we looked at this, and we said,
number one, people should know what
they are doing. There is a human trait in
all of us to underestimate the degree of
something bad we are doing. If you ask
someone how many calories they had
yesterday, I bet they’re going to say less
than they had. If they ask you how much
exercise you did they’ll probably
overestimate it.
“I’ve gone in and gutted the number
of notifications [I receive]. I really asked
myself, do I really need to be getting
thousands of notifications per day? It’s
not something that is adding value to my
life or is making me a better person. So I
went in and chopped that. Every time
you pick up your phone it means you’re
taking your eyes off whoever you’re
dealing with or talking with. If you’re
looking at your phone more than you’re
looking in somebody else’s eyes, you’re
doing the wrong thing!
“We want to educate people about
what they’d doing. This thing will
improve through time just like everything
else we do. We’ll innovate there as we
do in other areas. Basically, we don’t
want people using their phones all the
time. This has never been an objective
for us.”Cook may be right about the purpose
and motivation of the iPhone, and Screen
Time (go.macworld.com/h2sc) does a great
job of telling people how much they’re
using their phones. There’s obviously so
much more Apple could do in this area. It
could give you proactive warnings about
apps that you appear to be using too much,
and make it easier for the system to
differentiate between notifications that are
of real importance (like your home security
system) and those that can wait (like social
networking apps). ■