For someone who has spent half his life playing to packed stadiums, dodging paparazzi and managing the pandemonium that is global superstardom, you’d think Justin Bieber would have bigger concerns than his iPhone. But no — the second he off-gassed about this single Apple design decision, the internet erupted. Not because he’s a celebrity whining, you understand, but because everyone instantly understood the pain he was referring to. So it turns out not even Justin Bieber is immune to the everyday frustrations baked into our phones.
What set him off was not a glitch or a malfunction. It was not a virus or broken feature. It was so tiny, so obvious and so universally irritating that people almost laughed at how recognizable it was. His iPhone’s camera wouldn’t remember settings each time he launched the Camera app — it would keep snapping back to default instead of preserving what Devin had previously used. One minute he is shooting, and the next he’s navigating kicked-back-into-photo mode, and then it starts all over tout de suite because the phone knows better than he does what’s best.
You already know exactly why that feels maddening if you’ve ever tried to capture something quick — a scene that you don’t want to miss. And for someone like Bieber, who holds a camera up to his life and music and routines all the time, it wasn’t just a small annoyance. It was a sign that even the priciest, most polished smartphones can get the tiniest of details wrong in ways that drive people crazy.
What made his frustration so hilarious and so relatable is how many people complain about the very same thing. iPhones have always been great at the big stuff: cameras, processors, designs. But where small user preferences are concerned, Apple can be obstinate. The camera defaults. The notifications you can’t silence. The options were three menus down. The pop-ups when you least need them. These little things are what people argue about in group chats, and Reddit threads, and on Apple forums. And now, it seems, in celebrity rants.
The fact is, Apple’s design philosophy has always been its blessing and curse. The company loves to control the experience. It adores to make up its own mind about how the device will act. It loves simplifying the user interface, and it loves it so much that sometimes simplicity feels also restrictive. And when you’re on the go — shooting something, grabbing a snap, recording a clip — those inflexible design decisions can feel like friction rather than ease.
So of course Bieber bitching struck a chord. People are fed up with the little irritations that accumulate, especially on a product they use dozens of times every day. Many users have the sense that Apple sometimes places form before function. Sure, it’s not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but in this little picture — when you just want your phone to do what you ruddy well tell it — it matters an enormous amount.
And that’s what makes this story human. Bieber wasn’t being featured on a podcast about tech. He wasn’t trying to make a big statement about Apple. He was not meaning to start an argument. He wasn’t being a caricature of middle-class griping, he was just a normal guy annoyed by some small design choice that is making all our collective lives fractionally more irritating than they should be. The internet didn’t mock him. It joined him. Because if a superstar with every resource in the world still can’t outrun the fickle intricacies of an iPhone, well … the rest of us never stood a chance.
The real point of this moment is how personal technology has become. These aren’t just devices anymore. They are extensions of how we communicate, document and live life. And when a feature obstructs something — even for no good reason — it feels bigger than it needs to be.
So yes, Justin Bieber is just as frustrated by his iPhone as everyone. Not even fame can save him from terrible UI choices. And I guess that’s the most comforting thing: Even global superstars have those moments when they’re just standing there, gazing at their phone, muttering under their breath, wondering why the camera can’t seem to stay in that mode.
