"Head Injury, So Typical Tar"

So the title has nothing to do with what this post is about, except for the fact that I haven't posted because of the head injury and I wrote what I'm about to post while in the middle of recovering. I'll give more details on the injury later. For now, my silly attempt at writing a paper that turned into an iPhone review. Enjoy.

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Steve Jobs (1991)

It’s nearly impossible to see the day of any person living in the 21st century without some sort of technology involved somewhere within it. Television, vehicles, phones, computers, escalators, doors, clocks, lights, games, tools, cameras, they all uses some sort of technology. Charting the uses of an average college student reveals that the span between technology uses can be as little as 2 seconds to as much as however long they sleep, but that’s only if you don’t consider all of the systems out there that keep their personas in touch with the world 24/7 (social networks, voicemail, SMS, etc.). While the internet is a huge resource for students and really people from any demographic, the cell phone is usually a student’s first choice for immediate communication. Today, the cell phone is more than just a phone. It’s an instant messenger, a calendar, an address book, a map, and an internet browser. Of course, no phone is more than what an iPhone can be, truly an all-terrain bicycle for our minds.

I purchased my iPhone on a whim and out of necessity to change service providers quickly. I’d played with the phone in Apple stores since it had come out and always kept up-to-date on the system with reviews, tool updates, and technical issues. From what I’d read, the phone was really all that it had been hyped up to be, minus a few details. So when I needed a new phone, it seemed the wise, if not splurging, choice. From a user interaction standpoint, the iPhone does meet a lot of natural assumptions, as well as present somewhat of a learning curve. The look and feel of the actual physical device is like heaven in your hand, something you wish every phone would feel like. The interface is just as jiggly and pretty as you’d expect from Apple, and just as intuitive. The device is a powerful machine that really can be used for so much more than just a phone, an iPod and a web browser. The problem lies in that Apple restricts the user from harnessing that power, at least legally.

Within an hour of activating my iPhone I was disappointed with how little control I had over the device. Sure you can change the ringer, put in custom images for contacts, and move around icons, but nothing else is really available to change. You’re allowed to set a wallpaper image, but that image only shows up when you unlock the phone or when you’re on a phone call, everywhere else you’re stuck with the plain black background Apple sets. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t completely disappointed. I was still thoroughly impressed with the motion sensor on the screen that would rotate the display any which way I wanted, the shiny iPod cover-flow, the ability to flick images around my screen, it was all very cool. I just felt like a kid in a candy store who was told to only look and touch, not taste.

The applications that the phone comes standard with are obviously chosen because they’re what people most often want out of a hand-held computer. I’m calling the phone a hand-held computer because it really is more than just a phone. People have converted to using their iPhone as their personal computer, which is actually rather simple to do once you learn to get past the restrictions Apple’s based on it. The calendar, camera, notepad, photo album, calculator, clock, map, web browser, text messaging, YouTube, weather and stock applications take the iPhone and place it in a much larger demographic than most smart phones on the market today. Not many teenagers are seen carting around a Blackberry or Treo.