> Great technology should improve life, not distract from it
(Almost) everyone agrees.
> Great technology should improve life, not distract from it
Google then goes on to offer something superficial.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
What about going outside or spending time with your family and people you love? What about inventing something new?
What about offering something that will actually save some of your time, by the way?
Nope. This is an ad about a stupid mobile phone app.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
No negativity intended here. Sure, it could help to know you are wasting your time with apps—as if you didn't know that.
Some apps are indeed useful and improving lives. But offering people to waste their time tracking their own habits on Android comes off as rather patronizing.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
I can't help but picture this ad with the missing clock ticking icon or with the inevitable skeleton in a hoodie carrying a scythe...
I don't really understand your complaint. "What about going outside or spending time with your family and people you love?" - that is exactly how they pitch this initiative. They want you to feel that their technology is going to allow you to do exactly that.
> offering people to waste their time tracking their own habits on Android comes off as rather patronizing.
I agree it is pretty weird to offer a product that is so good that users are literally addicted to it, and then offering tools to help users limit that addiction. You might imagine it would be pretty stupid for a a slot machine designer to include prompts every 30 minutes asking you to stop playing.
However, the difference is that a person when prompted to stop watching YouTube might decide to spend their time and money building a website on Google's cloud platform, or even realise they need to buy that thing they just saw an advert for and hence the prompts might actually help Google's profits, not hurt them.
> I don't really understand your complaint. "What about going outside or spending time with your family and people you love?" - that is exactly how they pitch this initiative. They want you to feel that their technology is going to allow you to do exactly that.
Well maybe because the pitch is different from what they actually offer. In effect you are going to spend ages monitoring shiny graphs that will not tell you anything of substance, as opposed to free more time for you to do something more interesting.
For example, suppose said Google app shows that you have spent 3 hours watching Youtube that day. Well that's pretty bad for your productivity, right?
Except if you were writing a novel or working on something while quietly listening to Vivaldi. You didn't even watch it—many Youtube "videos" are just sound recording, with static images or slideshows that you wouldn't bother to even look at.
Again, we can (almost) all agree that
> technology should improve life, not distract from it
I totally agree.
I installed Moment on my iPhone a couple of weeks ago to track my usage and scale it down a bit.
My commitment was unrelated to the app though, and I was able to use my phone less. So much so that two days ago I disinstalled moment because the daily notification about phone usage had become just another annoyance.
Apps that want to help use apps less are superfluous.
(Almost) everyone agrees.
> Great technology should improve life, not distract from it
Google then goes on to offer something superficial.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
What about going outside or spending time with your family and people you love? What about inventing something new? What about offering something that will actually save some of your time, by the way?
Nope. This is an ad about a stupid mobile phone app.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
No negativity intended here. Sure, it could help to know you are wasting your time with apps—as if you didn't know that. Some apps are indeed useful and improving lives. But offering people to waste their time tracking their own habits on Android comes off as rather patronizing.
> Learn more about your time spent in apps.
I can't help but picture this ad with the missing clock ticking icon or with the inevitable skeleton in a hoodie carrying a scythe...