Pete Holmes hates his iPhone. Or rather. He hates what the device represents.
The HBO star keeps his screen grayscale. He puts his daily screen-time stats on his home screen like a warning sign. Most people? They doomscroll. Holmes checks out. He says life feels too much like office work. Texting is just another meeting you can’t skip.
But he isn’t Luddite. Far from it.
AI is the future. The past is just… exhausting.
He’s an optimist about artificial intelligence. He thinks it might actually save us from ourselves. He loves FaceTime, though usually he’s talking to his mom’s forehead because she can’t frame her face right. He looks at his computer the way you look at a girlfriend you know will eventually leave you for Barcelona.
Let’s talk about the phone itself.
The Anti-Max iPhone
He’s using an iPhone Air.
Released in 2025, it was a flop. No one bought them. Which makes Holmes love it even more. It doesn’t have the “ugly spider eyeball” camera array. It looks clean. It looks like Steve Jobs would approve. Everyone else is buying the Max. The one with the 2800-hour battery. They want endurance. Holmes wants aesthetic. He wants to look like he’s in Blade Runner, not Silicon Valley coding a backend server.
The short battery life is a flex. If he runs out of power by 3 PM? Good. He didn’t look at the phone.
His average screen time?
One hour and fifteen minutes.
He aims for under an hour. He succeeded for most of the week. It still stresses him out. The phone still digs its claws in. Especially when he flies. Or watches a movie. So he uses hacks. Black and white screen. No color dopamine hits. No slot machine visuals.
No social media on the device either.
Why? Because standing in airport security is no time to learn about a war in a country you’ve never visited while simultaneously checking if your aunt liked your photo from three years ago. It’s not natural. You step back. People notice.
“I’m not a big text person.” That’s the standard disclaimer.
80 Texts. 55,002 Emails.
He has 80 unread texts.
He marks them as unread constantly. Mark-as-unread was the greatest tech invention of the last decade. Maybe two decades. His wife? She gets through. Everyone else? They’re just bugging him. “Do I work for you?”
He predicts we’ll all just walk away. Like the Amish. Disinformation will clog our inboxes so thoroughly that we’ll be forced back to reality. We’ll have coffees. We’ll stand outside and talk. The AI lies in the texts will scare us off.
The email situation is worse.
55,426 unread emails.
If a thread goes over three replies, he starts fresh. He refuses to dig through archives. “I don’t do that anymore. I’m 47.” Modern life manufactures urgency. We play hot potato with stress. He’s saying “no.” He’s living proof that you can keep your job. You can live. And you can let 55,001 messages gather digital dust.
You can have a big ‘fuck off’ written across your inbox.
Music is a battlefield. He has Spotify, but his wife kicks him off it. Suddenly Beyoncé plays when he wants The National. So he uses Apple Music. Secretly. A tiny secret joy in a chaotic household.
Hardware with Heartbreak
His computer is a 2022 MacBook Air. M2 chip. Bought thoughtlessly because the previous one snapped in his backpack. He doesn’t feel love for it. Not like he felt for the 11-inch Mac Air. That one was small. Perfect. Or the 17-inch monstrosity. Those were friends. This new one? Planned obsolescence.
He cleans it. He keeps it minimal. It will fail soon. He knows it. So why attach? It’s a relationship doomed by geography. Like the Barcelona girlfriend.
Faces. Foreheads. Skulls.
Who was he on video last? His wife Valerie.
His daughter was with him. Mom was elsewhere. FaceTime bridges the gap. It synthesizes presence. “I saw her. She was there.” It’s modern magic. Until he calls his own mom. Then he’s FaceTiming a forehead.
He Googled a muskrat skull recently.
His daughter found it. He reverse-image searched it. Now he knows.
Last video? Daughter shoving her face into a strawberry shortcake at a pizza place. It’s a family tradition. He used to do the same. Mash cake into his face. That was his first comedy bit. Physical humor. Simple. Effective.
He asked AI for help with swim soreness. Bad advice. “Take a hot shower.” “Do light yoga.” He swarms daily. Shoulders ache at night. The AI gave generic, useless answers. But he’s still optimistic. He refuses to catastrophize about the technology. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he insists. He thinks calling it ‘intelligence’ is weird. It’s just a tool. A good business model, maybe.
Zero Socials. One Earplug.
Social network? None. He hates them.
Instagram gets a glance if he’s bored. TikTok and Reels? Addictive if you get caught in a good feed. Like eating a piece of cake. It makes him laugh. But he doesn’t get caught for more than a day or two. He stops. He moves on.
Least favorite tech? X.
He remembers when it was fun. Rob Delaney killing it. Shelby Farrow dropping killer jokes. You’d go there for joy. Now? It’s just… bad. Sora also annoyed him until they killed it off. “That nightmare gave me hope. It proved it doesn’t work yet.”
Emojis? The weeping face. 😭
The red heart. ❤️
The kissy face. 😘
He texts his wife the kissy face from the airplane.
He listens to his recorded standup sets and marks them with the green checkmark emoji. Just like that.
News source? People.
Biased. Unreliable. Hilarious. He watches his friends fumble through their own anger. They can’t even remember what they’re mad about. If Ted is wrong? Pete corrects him. “Hey Ted, that was wrong.” Anderson Cooper isn’t going to listen. So Ted stays wrong. Pete stays informed by osmosis and debate.
Reddit? No thanks.
The best tech product he owns? Noise-canceling earbuds.
He’s sound-sensitive. He puts them in everywhere. Nothing playing. Just silence. They are his shield against the airplane neighbor. The void is preferable to conversation.
He keeps a burner account for Uber, Amazon, everything. One email for the trash. When a company wants his address for marketing? He throws the burner email at them.
“How was that thing you ordered?”
That’s it.
We aren’t friends, LL Bean.
Nostalgia hits with a four-track TasCam tape recorder. Tactile. Physical knobs. You record guitar. Then bass. Then you hit record and feel the pressure. GarageBand lacks stakes. It’s too easy. He misses the friction.
His craziest rabbit hole? Speedrunners.
Kids beating 90s games in minutes. Brilliant community. Helping each other. He respects Summoning Salt on YouTube deeply.
But really? He’s stuck in the AI optimism loop now. He tells everyone: Look at the marketing. It’s business. They say “The World is Ending” to get regulations lifted. So they can do anything they want.
Holmes doesn’t buy the hype. Or the panic.
He just keeps his 55,004 unread emails.
