A thought popped into my head the other day, about the apps I use on my iPhone. So I gave it some thought, and I didn't think the list was that long. I know I have a ton of apps installed on my phone (I checked, it's 208), but as for day to day use, I barely touch most of them.
I seemed to pique my own interest, so I went through the list of apps I have installed on my phone, and took a note of each app that I have used in the last week or two. Even when I was being a bit generous, I could only find 27 apps that I've used.
The majority of them are core phone apps like Camera, Mail, Photos, etc, then the rest are mainly entertainment, social, and football related.
Full list of the apps I've used:
Core Phone Apps
- Camera
- Clock
- FaceTime
- Maps
- Messages
- Phone
- Photos
- Safari
- Weather
Shopping
- Amazon
- App Store
- Deliveroo (Food delivery)
Entertainment
- Cracking the Cryptic (Sudoku game)
- Reeder
- Spotify
- YouTube
Social
- Linky (I use the Share extension to share links to Twitter)
- Telegram (I use this literally for one person)
- Tweetbot
Sports
- OneFootball (Football scores)
- Premier League (Fantasy Football and stats)
- Sky Sports (Football news)
Other
- Monzo (Bank)
- Zero (Fasting)
That may seem like a relatively long list, but for most of them, I use them for a maximum of a few minutes at a time, and only a few times a week. I just went through them again, and I could probably drop 10 of them, and barely notice it.
This doesn't mean that I can now delete the other 181 apps that I haven't used this past week. (Although I should probably go through and clean some up.) Because there's a certain type of app that will only ever be used sporadically, like apps for flights or restaurants. So I'm not going full minimalist of anyone. But I did just look at my home screen, and of the 22 apps that are there, I haven't used 6 of them in ages.
I'm not writing this to say to everyone "hey, everyone, look at me, I use less apps than you". I just wanted to share something I noticed in my own behaviour, and maybe put a little thought into the possible reasons behind it.
One thought that entered my mind, was that maybe this is just how normal people use their phone? Maybe before, I was an iPhone "power user" but now I'm not? That does seem to match up with my current feelings about technology, and tech products in general.
In general, my interest in computing has dropped slightly, although to be honest, the biggest drop is my interest in Apple. And maybe this is because I've reached 30, but I just want things to work now. Sure, I can sit inside a command line for hours, and play around with silly customisations and tools, but when I'm doing a task like programming or writing, I don't care about the frills anymore.
Now I think about it more, that does seem to match up with a few more things I've noticed recently:
- I'm really enjoying using my minimal Arch installation on my ThinkPad.
- The iPad is starting to feel clunky and restrictive.
- I haven't been too interested in updating my iOS apps.
- I'm not interested in the latest and greatest technology anymore.
Even when I'm using my Mac, for both work and personal use, I rarely use anything other than a browser, text editor, terminal, chat app (for work), or email client.
It's fascinating to me to see how much my interests and feelings have seemingly changed so much recently. For quite some time, I was the "Apple guy" to my friends and family. Anything Apple did, I liked, anything Apple sold, I purchased. Maybe this is part of becoming older? If so, hopefully, that means I'm getting wiser.
Fortunately, I didn't build this blog around a niche, so I guess as I work out my new feelings on technology, and possibly my new interests, I'll keep on writing here.