"I come from a long line of Luddites. My grandmother special-ordered her Toyota Camry with crank windows because she was convinced it was "one less thing that will break." My father refused to upgrade our six-CD stereo system even though the eject button wouldn't open and it could only play the first CD he ever put in it. The Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 was the soundtrack to our family dinners for a decade."
"As for myself, I only switched to a smartphone in 2013, when it would've cost about the same amount to repair my flip phone. Now I am the same as anyone reading this. My phone is my toy and my toil, the first object I touch upon waking, the spackle to my spare minutes, the inanimate partner in our shared lie, which is that it works for me and not the other way around."
"Tech companies are accustomed to a certain amount of kicking and screaming after foisting new interfaces on the public. You can't please all of the people all of the time, especially when "all of the people" is in the billions. But ask your friends-or Google or Reddit or Bluesky or ChatGPT-about the operating system update, and you will be swept away in a river of anger."
""This is like foundationally bad," author and musician John Darnielle replied on Bluesky to someone who agreed with his original tweet (about the poor photo-cropping function). One Reddit thread was posted under the headline "New iPhone update made me so overwhelmed, I ended up throwing my phone." The subsequent post does not specify where the phone was thrown or at whom, but I have some suggestions."
A person with a family history of Luddism preferred low-tech devices, delaying smartphone adoption until 2013. That person's smartphone became indispensable, blending leisure and work and filling spare moments. An accidental agreement to a recent iOS update created immediate disruption. The update triggered intense online backlash across platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, and ChatGPT, with strong emotional responses including anger and reported extreme reactions. Examples include preferring crank windows, keeping a six-CD stereo that played only one disc, and listening to the same album for years. The episode raises questions about planned obsolescence, user frustration with forced interface changes, and whether such updates serve device longevity.
Read at WIRED
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