“While many people were disappointed that Apple introduced an iPhone 4S, rather than an iPhone 5, two weeks back, most missed the fact that they were witnessing history,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine.

“In 1984, when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac, he momentously introduced the graphical user interface. Then he actually topped himself by presenting another technology: the mouse. (The mouse was first introduced with the Lisa but not popularized until the Mac.) In essence, he introduced the next user input device that has been at the heart of personal computing for nearly two decades,” Bajarin writes. “In 2007, Jobs and his team did it again with the introduction of the iPhone. He did not invent touch computing. That technology has been around for more than 20 years via pen input or minimally within desktop touch UIs like those used in HP’s Touchsmart desktops. However, he married it to iOS and gave the world a completely new way to interact with small, handheld computers. With the new touch gestures part of its laptop trackpad designs, Apple has even extended it to the core Mac portable computing platform. Basically, Jobs’ second UI act brought touch UIs to mainstream computing.”

Bajarin writes, “Now we meet Siri, integrated into iOS. Jobs and the Apple team have given something to the world that it will look back on and regard as the next major user input technology: voice and speech. But we will also realize that the real breakthrough is in Siri’s applied artificial intelligence. It is its speech comprehension that will be its greatest advancement… Yes folks, for those of us at the iPhone 4S launch, we witnessed history being made. Unfortunately, a lot of people at that event missed it.”

Read more in the full article here.

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