> But since then the smartphone has mutated from a device of convenience into a grotesque attention-stealing privacy-invading Everything Device, which is used primarily as a proxy through which companies are doing massive harm to our society. For many people smartphones have become a necessary evil, and an increasingly-large group (many of whom Gen Z or Gen Alpha!) is deliberately refusing them out of self-preservation.

Right. The Jobs vision was still an accessory. An advanced and staggeringly capable one, but an accessory nonetheless. It hadn't yet become an inescapable, addictively-designed pillar of daily life.

People are also coming back around to the idea that convenience isn't the only thing that matters and that a "split device" lifestyle can even provide hobbies with associated communities for those who partake. Curating a music collection comes naturally after picking up a dedicated offline music player and getting into photography more seriously follows buying an old secondhand standalone digital camera, for example.