Word: phoning
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Into that iPod they stuffed a working version of Apple's operating system, OS X, so that the phone could handle real, nontoy applications like Web browsers and e-mail clients. They put in a cell antenna and two more antennas for wi-fi and Bluetooth, plus a bunch of sensors, so that the phone knows how bright its screen should be and whether it should display vertically or horizontally, and when it should turn off the touch screen so that you don't accidentally operate it with your...
...inch thick and widened it to what looks like a bar of expensive chocolate wrapped in aluminum and stainless steel. The iPhone is a typical piece of Ive design: an austere, abstract, Platonic-looking form that somehow also manages to feel warm and organic and ergonomic. Unlike my phone. Ive picks it up and points out four little nubbins on the back. "Your phone's got feet on," he says, not unkindly. "Why would anybody put feet on a phone?" Ive has the answer, of course: "It raises the speaker on the back off the table. But the right solution...
...forget about phone calls. Look at the video, which is impressively crisp and sharp. This is the first time the hype about "rich media" on a phone has actually appeared plausible. Look at the e-mail client, which handles attachments, inline images and HTML e-mails as adroitly as a desktop client. Look at the Web browser, a modified version of Safari that displays actual Web pages, not a teensy, deformed version of the Web. There's a Google Maps application that's almost worth the price of admission...
...directly from the iTunes store; you have to export them from a computer. And even though it has wi-fi and Bluetooth on it, you can't sync iPhone with a computer wirelessly. And there should be games on it. And you're required to use it as a phone--you can't use it without signing up for cellular service...
...these are quibbles. The fact is, the iPhone shatters two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices--such as an iPod and a phone--and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and they all--contrary to basic physics--occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking...