Life After iPhone Day Two

This was a work day with a one-hour driving commute. After Day One I presumed the lack of CarPlay would be the biggest issue on day two because otherwise the time I spend in the office wouldn’t be much different than day one.

Things That Happened

• I cheated again. My phone was plugged into my car so I could have CarPlay on my commute but I left it in there during the day;
• I was listening to a podcast in the car (via my iPhone and CarPlay) and when I got out to walk to work I realized that I couldn’t just resume it by using my AirPods and Siri to say, “Play” because I was using my iPhone in the car… I could have pulled out my iPad and connected to my AirPods but instead just used Siri to start playback of a music playlist from my Apple Watch;
• My lunch-time in this office is different than the office I was in on day one - it’s a lot more social and interactive. People are also on their phones and sharing news stories, pictures, or funny tweets. I typically keep my iPhone in my pocket so it wouldn’t normally be a big issue but today we got on the topic of sharing bad photos of ourselves and I couldn’t participate;
• I know I’m not unique in this, but trips to the washroom were drastically shortened because there was no iPhone to distract me;
• I had a personal phone call to make - which is rare, but does happen - and I was able to go into a private meeting room and use my Apple Watch without any issues;
• By the end of the day, my Apple Watch battery was at 35%. I suspect that this is because a) Apple Watch was on the cell network less (it was connected to my phone on the drive to and from work and b) I streamed more music from Apple Watch on day one than I did on day two - more than I would normally need to because I was just trying it out
• Before the drive home I tinkered a bit with the in-car setup because I really didn’t want to use my iPhone. I realized that I could connect my iPad over Bluetooth to the car stereo and still be able to use Siri through the car¹. While this is significantly less ideal than CarPlay, I could still play songs, playlists, and podcasts via Siri… I could also still use Siri to read/respond to messages. If I needed directions or had to make a phone call, I could use my AirPods and Apple Watch. This mostly worked and I was able to go without using my iPhone for the whole trip home

Day two went about as well as day one AND I discovered a totally acceptable solution to the CarPlay problem. Not perfect but there wasn’t anything that happened that made me want to abort this experiment.

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