Comment by Cthulhu_

I think that's another part of it; the novelty's worn off. When smartphones became ubiquitous, they were exciting; people would tune in on e.g. Apple's keynotes to see what they came up with this time.

But then it became more of the same. The difference between phone generations became more about performance and photography technology than anything new. The iphone hasn't done anything major since the iphone 4 or 5, or whenever they did their big redesign effort - IMO anyway, not to dismiss their efforts because in terms of power and software technology they've pushed the boundaries. Unfortunately it's mainly in areas I don't really care much about, that is, photography. Interesting to see how much the instagram generation directed phone development focus I guess.

The author mentions things like Netflix as well; it was written six years ago (ish), but it's only gotten worse. Netflix is full of what feels like artificial programs now, box ticking exercises; cartoon aimed at ages 3-6, check; segment aimed at PoC and/or women, check; David Attenborough nature documentary, check; political drama, check; desaturated Scandi crime show(s), check; video game tie-in, check; buddy cop film with high profile actors, check; the list goes on.