Daring Fireball tipped me off to an interesting new site, Hunch.
Hunch is a site to help you make decisions. Naturally the first question I tried out with it was one of Gruber’s suggestions: Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?
It became pretty clear to me as I answered the dispassionate, objective questions, what the answer was going to be. And I was right:
However, the reality is that I own an iPhone, and have scarcely even considered looking at a Pre, even for the sake of simple curiosity. So while the questions Hunch asked seemed dispassionate and objective, and let’s for the moment assume that they are, the experience leads me to a few questions of my own:
- Who wrote the questions? And how did they verify the accuracy of their answers?
- What criteria led them to choose the questions they did? Were there any other suitable questions that were omitted? Do the questions asked reasonably cover the scope of factors that may go into the decision?
- How are the questions weighted? Assuming they are not weighted at all, should they be? And should the weight of the questions be left to the user, rather than the author?
These are just a few of the many questions not answered by the Hunch experience.
I’m not at all suggesting that the site is a bad idea, or that it’s necessarily poorly implemented. This is just some food for thought on the merits of taking someone else’s advice when making a personal decision. It also reminds us to be wary of fully placing our trust in the All-Powerful Oz Internet. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Holy Smokes! It put me down for a Palm Pre by 94%! And I didn’t even let on regarding my opinion on Apple.
You have a “Hunch” that you are an Apple fanboy? Took you that long? I have a hunch that I am a Microsoft fanboy then.
Wow 96% for me. I didn’t feel like I was weighing questions towards the Pre much except the physical keyboard one. Seems like something is off in the system they are using. I have a G1 and wouldn’t trade it for either, although I haven’t used a Pre yet so take that with a grain of salt.
Well I did say I preferred a physical keyboard too. Actually I don’t mind the on-screen keyboard; what I really don’t like is trying to control games with an on-screen d-pad and buttons. It just doesn’t work.
It’s a shame too, because as much as I like my Nintendo DS, the iPhone is a more powerful system for gaming, and the software is a lot cheaper. I just wish more of the iPhone games were actually satisfying to play.
At least people are developing some decent games for the iPhone. The G1 hardly has any.
Now that Cupcake is out I have both a physical keyboard and a soft keyboard. I have to say I use the physical one 99+ % of the time. There are a few changes they made with the update I don’t like. Like when I am looking at photos in my photo gallery you have to tap the screen now to get an arrow to show up to tap again to get to the next photo. It should be a flick of the photo like the iPhone or tap the edge of the photo once like it was before the update. Also when booting up after a complete shutdown it takes like a minute more then it used to. Granted I hardly completely shut the thing down.