Can the iPhone4 ‘turn’ me?

I love Apple equipment, they look great, the user interface is great, though I’d be a whole lot happier buying one if it wasn’t for all the damn fanbois telling me how great they were and how they would change my life…

The iPhone4 is a significant improvement on the previous versions its added wonderful rich features like multitasking, digital zoom and HD recording. What is slightly odd is that when the iPhone first came out, many of these new features (missing from the first iPhones) were labelled by Apple fanatics as ‘irrelevant’, peculiar then that when Steve Jobs demonstrated these features there was rapturous applause. Strange as well that people queued around the block to get the iPhone4, pining for features that they dismissed not but a year ago.

So enough grumbling, the iPhone4 was available yesterday, and it’s nice, its faster, smoother, cleaner and crisper, but I’m still not convinced at switching though…

I currently have an HTC HD2, and I do love it, I love the way it crashes about once a month and I have to take the battery out to restart it, I love the way it sometimes tries to do a little too much and takes a few seconds to respond; why do I love this? Because I know I’m ‘working it’. I know that what I’m asking it to do is at least occasionally an effort for it. If it didn’t go wrong from time to time, I’d feel belittled by it. It would be as if, what I was expecting of it was so beneath it, it could play a grand master at chess while carrying out my mundane requests.

It gives me a sense that I’ve given it a meaty task that’s going to push it to the limits, it’s going to take blood, sweat and tears to complete.

Yes, ok so that ‘meaty task’ may be to tell me where to go in Google maps, or reply to an SMS, but at least my phone doesn’t mock me about the simplistic things I ask it to do.

The technology from Asimov’s U.S. Robots, eventually took control of society as they ‘knew better’ how to protect humanity than humans. In the film they also looked surprising ‘Apple-esk’. I’m safe in the knowledge that my Windows Phone won’t be doing anything much more than I ask it, your iPhone could be hatching a plot to usurp you 🙂

Lucidica is the IT department for small businesses in London.