Green Apples

Being green isn’t easy, especially when you’re a tech addict.  I’ve been an iPod Touch user for a while, but today I’ve moved further into dark Jobsian territory by moving to the iPhone.

I was looking for a smartphone and it was a toss up between the Palm Pre, Nokia N900 and the iPhone.  All have their pros and cons, but researching through the user online forums, it seemed to me that overall the iPhone seemed the least troublesome.  The Nokia and the Palm are both strong smartphones: the Palm being particularly dainty and pretty with a clever interface, the Nokia being a super powered Linux machine, but complaints over updates and support were a little too frequent for my liking, particularly for devices relatively new to the market.

I like my technology to work, and at least the iPhone has pedigree and I’m familiar with the interface from the iPod Touch.  So despite Apple normally winning in the visual design stakes (I actually think the iPhone/Touch is an ageing design begging for a major facelift), in my case it was down to practicality with a bit of compromise.  So now I have a BriPhone.

Although the Apple apps aren’t anything new to me, it’s not something I’ve delved too deeply into with my Touch.  I never really bothered with the iFart, iBeer, iTorch or any other of the iPrefix novelty apps.  The British Gas meter reading app is useful though.  But the iPod was mostly for casual WiFi surfing at home, and music and podcast listening on the road.  It holds only two games – solitaire and Mahjong.  Yes I know, boring.

But this afternoon I read an article in the Guardian about a new app which answers climate denial arguments, which piqued my interest, especially when it was revealed that the app came from the same guy behind the excellent Skeptical Science website.  I downloaded the app and now I’ve got the perfect in-the-pub tool to point people in the right direction – follow the science.

Who would have thought geek gadgets and climate change would so successfully intersect?