iOS Surprise Sobriety Checks

I’ve been trying to spend time away from my computer, which usually results in me bringing back existing ideas or at least riffing off of popular past idea formats for a design.

One concept I haven’t riffed on in a while is the iOS screen time blocker. If you have a time restriction on an app, a blocker will appear reminding you of this fact. However, I started using this screen for things like posture checks or a step to unlock feature.

This got me thinking… Apple is continuing to expand their product offering. With their payments infrastructure (Apple Pay, Apple Card, etc.) it’s not completely unreasonable to see a world where they could programmatically detect when you’ve been out drinking (with Health and/or payment data) and force administer a sobriety test before using an app like Google Maps.

This is invasive in some ways but could also save lives. A feature like this would upset a lot of people, but it makes me wonder how much we want technology to take an active versus a passive role in shaping our behavior.

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