When purchasing the iPhone 15 Pro, I was completely convinced this small upgrade to the device was going to prove immensely useful. Switching the mute switch for an Action Button seemed like a genius move, as I just put my device on silent anyway and never take it out. Now I had something useful to help me do things on my phone — oh how wrong I was!

Let’s start by prefacing this with the fact that I know some people find the action button really useful. I have seen some people have wonderful setups and took to it straight away. I’ve even seen people use it, normal people, out in the wild! So I am well aware that your usage may vary, but please bear in mind this is my blog, so this is about me.

I was convinced, though. That’s not some kind of rise to keep you reading. Yet here I am a day from the next iPhone announcement, possibly with yet more buttons, having hardly ever used the action one. There doesn’t seem to be many reasons for this outside of muscle memory and forgetting it’s there, but I’ve heard similar stories from other people, too. The lack of use boils down to a general opinion that it is in the wrong place and needs to have more use cases.

I’d like to use it more. I have tried, but ultimately, I simply forget it is there. Perhaps if it was on the right-hand side as many people suggest, it might have reminded me a little more. My brain associates the upper-left side as the barren land of the silent switch that served me not other purpose than a fidget toy. I use my phone left-handed and turn it left when taking photos, so even using it as a camera button is uncomfortable.

This revolution seems to be something users are excited to see on the regular iPhone 16 models, so let’s see if adoption improves. However, I am of the mind that it will just lead to even more people forgetting it is there and being dropped in a few generations.

Every so often I get itchy feet. A yearning for something different in my tech life, and I begin to question why I use Apple products. It doesn’t help there are so many interesting Android devices being launched, and that I feel more than a little squeezed by Apple — but what actually is keeping me using Apple products?

Apple Watch

This is my most used device. I love it, always have, and it would be one of the hardest things to give up if I switched to Android. There are two main reasons for this, both of these can be done on Android Wear watches. The first of which is obviously notifications, any new phone I have gets put in silent mode and is never taken out of it. I also love a silent alarm that taps me on the wrist but doesn’t wake my whole household.

Health and fitness is critical to me, both for keeping fit and also monitoring my health issues. The Apple Watch gets lots of stick in running circles, and loads of people will tell you to get a Garmin. However, my Ultra was with me every step of the way for training and running a marathon, including streaming podcasts and tracking all my runs, and I couldn’t ask for anything better. It looks great, feels great, and I have zero need to upgrade to a new one.

Family Quirks

All of us in Team Morris have Apple devices. My wife and son have iPhones and my daughter has her beloved iPad. We share location data, smart home devices and photo libraries that are easier if we are all locked into Apple. This was the biggest reason we got my son an iPhone last year, upgrading from a cheep Android phone which was his first device.

MacBook Pro

Let me be completely frank, there is absolutely no way I would give up working on a Mac. I’ve done it for years now, I have all my workflows down, and Apple would have to stop making computers entirely for me to give it up.

I have nothing bad to say about Windows, I haven’t used it bar Remote Desktop since Windows 8, but my preference for macOS runs much deeper and there is zero need for me to switch. This doesn’t stop me using a non Apple phone though, apart from a slightly worse workflow for transferring files, working with clearer shots and sending messages from my desktop.

Non Issues

The usual thing people point to with switching is iMessage. Which is completely non issue for me, I would simply use WhatsApp. I like being able to send messages from my desktop, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

I am also completely ok with not have an iPhone in a hardware sense. When I first switched it was for a vastly superior camera and there are now numerous Android handsets that have a shooter of at least compatible quality (if not better).

There are only two apps that I use that are not cross-platform. Ulysses, which I tend to use more on my iPad and Mac, and Matter. Neither of which are dealbreakers for switching. Couple with the fact I don’t actually take many photos on my phone anymore, means that both of these are a non issue for me.

I’m still here

If it was cost-effective to try out a full package of Android devices (phone, watch, and accessories) I’d be up for trying it out — but they don’t exist. The Pixel launch offer with heavy discounts on accompanying watch and buds is the closest I have come, but I’d still have to sell up to try it, and this is here I think most people fall down.

It’s too expensive and too much of a learning curve to give up all of these things. The risk doesn’t seem to match the reward anymore, so I’m stuck. There’s nothing wrong with this but something to be aware of.

Ben Werdmuller writing about Threads trading trust for growth:

If X has fake news, Threads is assumed to have fake views: engagement by any means necessary.

I did not know that Meta were incentivising engagement bait, but it now seems obvious. Despite my initial thoughts on liking Threads as a social network, I absolutely cannot stand to use it now. I had to write a post yesterday due to a few missed replies to my cross posted blog posts, stating as much.

Don’t get me wrong, the thirsty posts have always been there and from the very start people were insistent that you had to “train the algorithm”. Swipe away what you didn’t like and make sure you made a clear indication of what you didn’t like. Well, I am here to tell you, my friends, it makes absolutely no difference. Meta have turned the clout chasing idiots up to 422 instead of 10, and I can’t take it any more.

Turns out the constant stream of easily searchable questions, or incorrect hot takes in which the original poster never replies are funded by Meta themselves. That’s right, in an attempt to boost the platform, they are paying select accounts up to £5000 to post this crap.

Should users just choose to log out for a bit because of the constant barrage of open-ended questions with 500 replies, you can’t even get away from it on Instagram. I am inundated with “someone started a Thread” or I get red bubbles encouraging me to log in and read all the replies. Only to be treated by these useless things.

What am I supposed to do with that information exactly? Jump up and down with glee? Try harder for that hit of dopamine? No thanks, I am out.

For many years, I’ve had an issue with professional reviewers and the number of devices they cover. The smartphone market is ever-growing with what seems like hundreds of devices each year, leaving the period between first use and review desperately short for many people who can and does present issues.

Admittedly, high-profile reviewers know exactly what they are looking for and are so used to testing devices they can conveniently give consumers a good overview of the device with limited usage. However, this often leads to very staged reviews that cover very basic things. There are only so many videos you can watch that tell you what the battery life is like, how it feels to swipe around, and then show you a few camera test shots. You simply can’t get a good idea of a the new device can do in real life usage in the desperately short periods that exist now.

As a result of this, I started to rely on smaller creators, or people I followed on social media, to give me some real-world data. There is no shortage of excellent writers and videographers making their filing known. Reviewing their devices and giving their opinions. Of course, you then need to think about bias and also build in a period of positivity that dominates the first few days or weeks. It’s exciting having a new device in your hands, and understandably this means that the rose-tinted glasses are firmly fixed in place.

This post isn’t really about phone reviews though, it is to point out that honeymoon periods exist for more than just your latest love interest. New things take time to show real

usefulness and as anyone who has met someone who turned out to be too good to be true, sometimes time is the best indicator of issues. Matt Birchler summed this up in his unusually sassy post, ’I’ve heard this story before’. Writing about new productivity methods, he said, “Making changes to how you work can often feel invigorating at the start, but cracks develop over time.”

He’s wrong about pen and paper (I love it), but he’s dead right about the tendency to sing about something without giving it the proper evaluation period. Which is completely understandable. When you think you’ve found something, particularly something you think can make a difference to others, it’s exciting to preach. I am very guilty of this, writing blog posts about new systems that only last a few weeks more. These days, I tend to move things much less and mess around with systems only when they need it.

The friction of new habits takes time to work itself out. The excitement wains and motivation and energy defaults to the simplest path. It doesn’t matter if you have a new partner, a new productivity system or a new gadget, review periods take time to work out and that’s OK.

I wrote this note on my phone when first considering buying a Boox Palma. I wasn’t convinced that replacing my social media action with reading was necessarily the best option, but in the sort term, I can’t see any other way. Like a smoker that needs to find something to do with their hands, I to need to find something to occupy myself instead of doom-scrolling. So I jumped in, but this question still exists.

Of course, I did my research before buying. Read loads of articles and watched far too many YouTube videos on the Book Palma. Luckily, this is the new hotness and content isn’t difficult to find — just this week members of The Verge team were talking about it on The Vergecast and MKBHD made a video on it. The Boox Palma is a device I have been eyeing for a while since friend of the blog Kevin Wammer posted about his, and Craigmod began gushing. This sounds like some kind of weird justification for purchasing such a weird device, and in some ways it is — but I wanted it before it was cool, OK!

Due to this research, YouTube thinks I am some kind of e-Ink obsessive, which is annoying, but at times interesting. Devices like the Hisense A9 and the BigMe HiBreak infiltrated my feed. Think Boox Palma, but with worse software and a SIM card slot. Reviews are mixed on all of these pink phones, but they all feature b-roll of someone reading on their phone with activities going in the background. This was sold as something great, it’s a Kindle in your pocket everywhere you go, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I am missing the point.

Granted, reading won’t be working to distract me as much as social media is. It won’t be hacking my brain to ruin my attention span and possibly, my mental health. So it’s better. Reading is one of my favourite things to do, but if I will be reading instead of being present in the world, that can’t be as good as I think it is. Can it? Given the choice, wouldn’t it be better to simply learn to be bored a bit more?

I’d like to say I have some evidence to back this up. However, my attempts to see if I am replacing one distraction with another remain unanswered. There is some subjective information out there that reading is much better, but much of this is removal of doom-scrolling, not the activity itself. Adding my own personal take, one that is much too early to hold much weight, I would agree that having a device like this instead of my phone is nearly all benefit.

I say nearly because it takes some understanding of its limits to mould it to your use. I took some time to think about how I wanted to limit the ability of my Boox Palma before buying, and several conversations with Kevin. However, that hard work at the start has led to reading more, visiting social media less and general feeling much more balanced. Long may it continue.