Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Configuring Your iPhone for Vacation
I'm leaving in a few minutes on the first real, completely disconnected non-working vacation since the three days I spent in New Hampshire in 2003 after my dissertation defense.
I'm taking extra measures to disconnect. I'm not usually the get-away-from-it-all type, but I think it's an important thing to do at least once every several years.
As I've been unsubscribing from email lists, etc. to keep the back-to-work Inbox anxiety to a manageable level on September 10, when I return 12 days hence, it occurred to me that I ought to put my iPhone into "vacation mode". I turned off all my Mail accounts, so the phone won't even fetch messages, moved all the productivity icons to the 2nd home page so I don't see them, and left only Weather and Maps. Finally, I replaced the calendar/clock/mail/SMS icons in my home bar with vacation apps like Camera, iPod, and Photos.
Here's the final result. My iPhone is now configured for maximum leisure.
In an ideal world, the phone should have been able to look at my calendar and put itself into this kind of state, or at least asked me what kind of state to go into. But that kind of subtle context-awareness, which Mac power users can experiment with using tools like Marco Polo, is still many years down the road for the broader marketplace. It won't take just simple accelerometer and light sensors to infer complex future behaviors and intentions like going on vacation. But at least for now, Apple gives me the flexibility I need to adapt my device in just a few minutes with little hassle.