Is the app and the app phone better for our brain? Is the Apple way superior to Microsoft?

I don't know.

I do know that I've said on multiple occasions that the app is superior to, say, the "tile" or to a more integrated, 'holistic' method of data and media and personal interaction.

I say this based on experience. Our brain seems to function better with focus. An app focuses our intent, our actions.

Indeed, I believe I'm still the only analyst out there that has stated that no one else seems to be picking up on the extremely divergent UI *design* issue of our time:

singluar focus vs multi-tasking

Apple today is iOS and Mac. With the iOS, the app reigns supreme. It is, almost exclusively, an isolated application with a focused task or intent: send a Tweet. Update Facebook. Take a picture. Play Monkeyball.

Windows Phone, by contrast, proudly delivers more and more (real-time) data across various services and applications, putting each in front of you. This is coupled with integration of various services, unlike the iPhone which to date, only allows Twitter to have nearly complete access at the system level.

Only, the same thing appears to be happening on the desktop, yet no one else is picking this up. The new/upcoming Windows, like Windows Phone, embraces multi-tasking, placing a great deal of information and services front and center. Mac, on the other hand, appears to be (slowly) trying us to focus on a single application; Pages, say. And Mac OS encourages us to fill the screen with the single application we (need/want to) focus on.

Most people, I assume, would choose the Windows construct. Perhaps that is the wrong choice. Per Live Science, our brain appears to embrace compartmentalization:

Now a new study suggests that it's the very act of walking through a doorway that causes these strange memory lapses.

"Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away," said lead researcher Gabriel Radvansky, a psychologist at the University of Notre Dame. "Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized."

"When we are moving through the world, it is very continuous and dynamic and to deal with it more effectively, we parse things up," Radvansky said. Neuroscientists have begun imaging the brains of people crossing event boundaries and, from these studies, are just beginning to piece together how the brain performs this function. "There are a lot of [brain] areas that light up at different kinds of event boundaries."

Mental event boundaries are useful because they help us organize our thoughts and memories. But when we're trying to remember that thing we were intending to do… or get… or maybe find… they can be annoying.