That's what they're trying to do, yeah. To give off a cool vibe I mean. To raise more money. There is nothing even remotely as cool in their real (or not) product. I was very excited when they started specifically because of their cool branding, but the vibe quickly wears off.
I've been running dumbified version of iOS for a few months now, and I'm very happy with it.
I removed every 'fun' app except for a few exceptions:
- ChatGPT, but mostly in voice mode, and with other people - as a party trick.
- Whisper Memos (https://whispermemos.com/), I record voice memos and they end up in my email, so I can continue with that idea when I'm on a computer (whether that is a prompt for AI, or a todo.)
- Basics like Banking, EV charging, Maps, Parking, Messages, Weather, Authenticator, Reminders, etc.
I removed App Store as well as Safari, so these apps is all I can do on my iPhone.
In the beginning, I set up a Screen Time code so I wouldn't be able to cheat. But in a few weeks I got used to it. So App Store and Safari are enabled again, but I never use them. (Maybe Safari is disabled. I have no idea to be honest.)
The biggest downside is I never know where my phone is. However, I'll gladly accept this downside.
I used audio journaling before Whisper came out, and I did have a pipeline that would run a transcription through Google Cloud and save the transcript to Evernote. I didn’t actually review the transcripts most of the time, but the very fact of developing my thoughts—without being constrained by typing speed—was very helpful.
What I also liked about this system was that it gave me independence of place: I didn’t have to sit down at a computer. Instead, I could be thinking aloud while driving a car, or while taking a walk in the countryside. Usually, after finishing such a conversation with myself, I would automatically feel much more clarity about the upcoming day, or about whatever issue that had been on my mind.
If I were to add AI to this process, I would perhaps only have the AI extract some bullet point summaries for the topics that were covered, and anything that could be considered a potential to-do item—so that as output you would get these high-level summaries, along with the raw transcript.
If you wanted to, you could also color-code for each summary item the parts of the raw transcript in which these are covered. So, if you ever do look at the summary-slash-transcript, you can always quickly look up what your thoughts were on the subject—though I would guess this would not happen often.
And the most value from that would probably be that your future self, say 10 or 20 or 50 years from now, will be able to dive into what went through your head at this point in time. For the immediate present, the most value probably just comes from taking the mess that is in your head of unfinished thoughts and serializing it into coherent speech—until you feel everything that’s on your mind has been said.
I have wanted to record parts of my stream of consciousness so I can put more time into it later - but that will require me to block out time to do that. I hope I'll have it some day.
If you're adding another word, it sounds more differentiated than Claude to Claudia. I was among the many who thought this was an official product from the makers of Claude. It's like if your product was called Whisperer.
You can go to Screen Time and disable Safari and App Store.
You can protect it with a passcode, which is what I did.
After a few weeks I just got used to my phone being dumb.
Now these apps are unlocked, but the habit is there, and I use it for utility only.