> It’s common to rack up 4 hours or more of screen time a day on your phone. Here’s one way to see the cost of that: every 20 years, you lose 5 years of your waking time looking at your phone.

If you spend 4 hours/24 hours on your phone then every 20X you'll have lost 3.33... X.

I think the author is using year and waking-years but it doesn't parse well for me because you don't get close to 20 waking-years for every 20 years.

Well shoot. I just ordered a Mudita Kompakt (minimalist smartphone) to help tackle my phone addiction. Seeing the Apple Configurator allows me to define what apps can be installed and the ability to remove official apps such as Safari or the App Store, now I'm wondering if I just want to stick to my iPhone and do this or use my Kompakt when it arrives.

Could this be used as an alternative to Parental Controls? Appple's implementation of parental controls is so deficient that it gives me PTSD every time I need to configure it.

One thing to keep in mind is that supervising via Apple Configurator (without a hosted MDM server) means you lose Activation Lock protection.

It's ironic what's useful is making the phone effectively into a Palm OS phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS

Perhaps focussing on productivity and helping users like these devices did/had to instead of being consumption devices is a way to explore?

The best use I have for dumbphones is install VLC to access the NAS music server or your favorite music stream service (I use radioparadise) and play on the stereo.

The Apple Configurator seems like a great tool to setup a phone for your children or tech illiterate elderly parents. Many of us would have people in our lives who might actually understand how to use their phone if the only icons on the home screen where messages and phone. I could imagine ChatGPT would be a good option for them to be able to look up information in the real world.

I have been doing this exact same thing for about a year, this guy is basically me! I love it so far. One difference with his setup, I also set up my Configurator profile so that I can only navigate to whitelisted websites, and I haven't whitelisted anything. This means I have no browser whatsoever (even the in-app ones, like in Maps or FB Messenger, don't work).

I did a CRTL+F for "Jamf" in this thread and didn't see it mentioned, but I would say if you're going through the effort of Apple Configurator then it makes sense to go the next mile and get some kind of MDM software that will make future updates and policies easier to apply.

As a bonus, if you're a parent and have kids it'll be very useful for them.

I'll have to remember this when I next get a new phone so I don't have to wipe my current device.