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How many applications have you downloaded to your phone? An idea?
Ten years ago, the App Store icon made its debut on the iPhone. At the time, there were 500 applications in total. Today, there are more than 2 million applications available.
Having so many choices can lead to digital hoarding – by downloading and keeping apps you do not need or use. Stan Horaczek says that too many apps can do more harm than taking up space.
Horaczek is the technology editor for Popular Science and The Show spoke with him about his latest article on unused apps.
CHRISTINA ESTES: It's been 10 years since the App Store icon debuted on the iPhone. At that time, there were 500 apps in total. Today, there are more than 2 million applications available. Having so many choices can lead to digital hoarding, downloading and storing apps you do not need, do not use them. Stan Horazcek says having too many applications can do more harm than taking up space. He is the technology editor for Popular Science and we talked via Skype about his latest article on unused apps.
STAN HORACZEK: Applications make a lot of promises. You know, it's funny. If you browse the pages of my apps, you can look at the different stages of my life. You can see all the New Year's resolutions I've made, you know. You can see the food tracking apps and the organizational apps since when I was trying to put myself in order, and I think there are a lot of them, where we think that, you know, we're getting them ready and it's the same for people who accumulate objects, where they think about themselves, and well I might need that later, so I can download it now and then I'll have it later, you know. This seems very easy to do because they are digital objects. They do not take place in a real literal sense.
ESTES: Now your article in Popular Science mentions a report last year that found that the average person launches about 9 apps a day. HORACZEK: You know, I review a lot of smartphones and I see a lot of smartphones and I get there, you know, with newer and newer ones. best smartphones. It's fun for me because the first thing I do is to set up the same group of apps on every phone that I use, and I've got the impression that is what most people do. They use Facebook and the texts and Instagram and, you know, maybe Snapchat, even if it's less. You know, we do some things the same way. We have these habits that we use and it is really difficult for an application to penetrate into this restricted circle of applications that we use all the time. There are some other studies that say that the average person uses, as in the course of a month, we will use about 30 applications or a little less than that, and that seems to me just because there is To some you do not use it all the time, like your banking application, you probably do not open it all the time, but you probably open it once a month when the bill is due.
ESTES: So I think you say that, based on the average usage, we would only need an application page on our phone.
HORACZEK: Yeah that's right. So, I mean, I have an iPhone 8 plus. That's what I use in my personal life, and I think that's 25 apps that fit that first page. We do not really need much more than that. When you look at your phone, sometimes you can be, you know, paralyzed decision, where if you want to do something – if I want to make a list or if I want to do something with pictures, like, it can be too much to look at all the applications that are on my phone and say that I do not know what to do, then you come, you know, fall into these models where you just open the Facebook application again.
ESTES: If an average person simply uses an application page, I wonder how many applications you have on your phone.
HORACZEK: Let's see. I'm going to pick up my phone right now. If you go through, I have it now, before you make the call, I have eight pages of apps, which is too much. I guess that is, what, almost two hundred applications, I guess?
ESTES: Okay Stan, your entire article talks about why people need to get rid of certain apps, so why is it so difficult? Why do you have eight pages, and why is it so difficult for people to get rid of it?
HORACZEK: I think, you know, it's in my brain, it's in my genre, my family history that we've always saved things, you know. We say, oh we might need that on the road, you know, and I have games out there that I did not play that I say to myself, "And if I'm on a plane and that I want to play this game and I do not have a link? "It's just – I remember when I used them and I remember that they were useful, and it was m & # 039; It's hard to get rid of it. Although now, I'm trying to get through and take my own advice and call them because it's not free to keep these apps out there. For one, it takes a lot of storage. You know, some of these apps are hundreds of megabytes, you know, even if you do not know. In the article, we somehow explain how you can access your settings and tell you the space occupied by each application. Some of them take up a lot of room on your device and, you know, it sucks when you run out of space, you know, because you have those apps that you do not use. This is not a very effective way to use your phone and it leads to a frustrating experience. One of the drawbacks of keeping a lot of applications is that if you do not think about an application and you do not use it, there is a good chance that you will not have it. do not go to update it. Deprecated applications are not secure, you know. The reason they often update apps is that they add new security. They discover that there are defects and they repair them. So, if you have not activated automatic updates and you do not use any application, there is a good chance that it will stay right there, and the next time you When you open it, you will use advanced software that could have some sort of fundamental flaw that could actually damage your device or, as you know, make you vulnerable to a cyber attack.
ESTES: Is there a good system for sort of purge applications?
HORACZEK: Google and Apple, in their next versions of their mobile operating systems, make this idea of digital wellness, like, at the forefront of their software. What is it going to do, is to tell people how much time they spend in applications and how much time they spend using their phones, and the idea is that this is going to help people use their phones less and, you know, be more present in their own lives. But as a byproduct of that, it will also tell you what apps you do not use on your phone, and just have that information, be able to say, wow I've downloaded the app Delta, you know, two years ago when I took a flight and he just sat on my device to take up space. You know, it may be time to remove that and, you know, clean your phone a bit.
ESTES: Okay Stan, follow your own advice. I want you to address these eight pages of apps. Stan Horazcek is technology editor at Popular Science magazine. Thank you very much for your time.
HORACZEK: Thank you for inviting me
Editor's note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Stan Horaczek's name
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