Earlier we carried a summary of an Associated Press article that reported Time Magazine would name Apple’s iPhone “Invention of the Year.” Now, Time’s article has come online:
Lev Grossman reports for Time, “Yes, there’s been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple’s iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:”
1. The iPhone is pretty: [It’s] part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.
2. It’s touchy-feely: Apple’s engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.
This is, as engineers say, nontrivial.
3. It will make other phones better: [Apple CEO Steve Jobs] negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone [that] gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They’re demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.
4. It’s not a phone, it’s a platform: [Apple’s OS X-based] iPhone [is] more than just a gadget. It’s a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name.
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come: The iPhone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it’ll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve.
Full article here.
