Adam Maguire

  • My logic/emotional battle over the iPhone

    I’ve been listening through some archived episodes of the absolutely brilliant Radio Lab podcast and recently came across their show on choice.

    One experiment they speak about in this episode relates to the emotional and logical decision-making centres of the brain and how important they are in making a quick and rounded choice. Both sides are necessary in any decision, they suggest, as both give a different but equally relevant perspective on things.

    The emotional side will suggest the path that has the most instantly satisfying outcome, even if it is less than ideal in the grand scheme of things. The logical side will weigh up the facts and decide on what path makes the most sense, even if it’s the one that’s unappealing or even upsetting. So in a choice between cake and salad the emotional side will choose cake because it tastes so good but the logical side will choose salad because it’s healthy and nutritious.

    Having listened to this show (coincidently on the iPhone I have on trial) I’m now distinctly aware of the rolling battle between these sides over Apple’s mobile device. It has so many flaws but so much charm and I constantly change my mind as to which side out-weighs the other.

    So here’s how my brain is working when thinking critically of the iPhone:

    Emotional side:

  • It’s absolutely beautiful.
  • The screen looks fantastic.
  • The OS is brilliant.
  • I can do so many trivial but entertaining things with the various apps.
  • I can have everything I need in one device; e-mail, phone, text, web-browsing, mp3 player, twitter client, etc.
  • Some of the sync features with iTunes (amongst other things) are superb.
  • The physical ‘silence’ switch is so useful.

    • Logical side:

  • You cannot touch-type.
  • The battery is far too small.
  • It has a maximum of 16GB storage, which isn’t much when you factor in music, film, pictures, apps and so on.
  • The touch screen does not work when you have gloves on.
  • The App Store and iTunes is too well integrated – too easy to spend money.
  • You cannot download podcasts over 10MB over 3G.
  • O2 have a monthly 1GB download limit.
  • There’s no flash player, yet.
  • There’s no copy and paste, yet.

    • Some of these things would normally be deal-breakers for me, particularly the touch-typing issue, but the iPhone has so many tiny moments of perfection it’s hard to write it off like that.

    I don’t think I could use this as a phone, however, because of the textiabove ng issue so I think if I were to buy a touch-based Apple device I’d be leaning towards the iPod Touch. What puts me off that is the fact that you need to be in a WiFi zone to check e-mail and browse the web so here’s how Apple can solve my conundrum:

    They can release an iPod Touch internet device with at least 32GB of storage and a 3G connection that allows it to use the mobile phone network without actually being a phone. In other words they should hurry up and release an iPod/PDA with a SIM Card slot; if they do I’ll be all over it.