The Subtle Art Of Picking Your iPhone Background - And How It Backs You Up
You may not think that the background on your iPhone says very much about you… but it does, more than you think you thought. You see, eyes are not really the windows to the soul. At least not the only ones - for they can often be covered. Not only that, they can be very misleading - like if eyes are the windows to the soul, then what would blindness, or pink eye imply? Deep…
Backgrounds for phones are another matter entirely. Yes; even though they can be turned off, broken, sold, traded, confused, mistaken, lost, found, and are really in no way like windows to the soul at all… yet they are. They are your artistic announcement to the world.
There’s really no sense denying it anymore… the iPhone, and heck, Apple in general, are much like that old OCD girlfriend who couldn’t be in your car for ten seconds before she starts readjusting all of your randomly placed ‘floorboard ornaments’. Apple likes to be in control. They like to create these really beautiful, breathtaking artistic devices and then give you practically no creative control over what they do or look like. Of course, there is always jailbreaking, but any term that uses the word ‘breaking’ sounds a little dangerous to me.
So amidst all of the carefully and uniformly spaced app icons - four across, five down; and against that lonely, solitary black backdrop, there is precious little room for personalization… except, for the background on the unlock screen!
This is your stomping ground. The place where you can, with confidence, show the world exactly the kind of person you are! So maybe you’re someone who likes technology, but you're not just that! You could be a nerd who likes tech… um, another example. A cheerleader who likes tech, an actor that likes tech; all these combinations and more!
Anyway, there are essentially three types of backgrounds.
Humorous:
You’re a clown. You saw the picture and it made you laugh, and now you force other people to see just how funny you really are. You find yourself spending inordinate amounts of time pausing on your unlock screen. I mean, it takes like a 3rd of a second to slide your finger, but for you- it takes just long enough to angle it carefully so as to catch the wandering eyes of those around you.
Artsy/Nature:
Face it, it’s lame. Nature is everywhere, so why would you want to have it on your phone too. People will think you are pretentious - or perhaps classy… the difference? Whether or not you're looking at your phone from the drivers seat of a Prius.
Text:
Good heavens, if I see another faux inspirational quote made in cutesy little text fonts… I think I am gonna change my life.
These three types of backgrounds (radically oversimplified and exclusive) can basically come from three sources (these are pretty much true).
Native to the iPhone:
Your lazy, c’mon, this is the only chance we have to stick it to the man! To say to Steve Jobs “I can put whatever picture I want on this phone and the only thing you can do about it is to determine the width, height, clarity, spacing, alignment, and resoution of it! HA, take that!”
Picture taken from your phone:
These are the best probably… although likely simultaneously the worst.
Picture taken/created from someone else:
Unfortunately, this is the majority of the backgrounds we see gracing the screens of our fellow phowners. And every time I see one of these tired, overused, cliché backgrounds (including the ones on my own phone) I think of a quote from the very wise Stewie Griffin from Family Guy while he is trying to relate to a bunch of high school students: “You should check out the music on my MySpace page. I use other peoples creations to express my individuality.” Well-played Stewie…well played.
In high school I remember debating with other students about whether or not we should have uniforms or just continue with our already ridiculously strict dress code. All the typical arguments abounded; uniforms promote unity/destroy individuality, etc. etc. Well, now we have something that has crushed social boundaries of all kinds. Together we can all hold forth our 3.5 inch touch screens, in unison beaming proudly for this coalescent tool…but then we can switch them on-in an act of supreme individuality! Each screen different in its own way!!! Windows to the soul indeed.
How often do you change your backgrounds? Have you had the same one for weeks, months, since intitial purchase?