Nontrivial Exercises

Just What Exactly Did Apple Reinvent?

Yes, it’s fun to write about the iPhone - how can you not? If you have a lawyer, it’s also fun to sue Apple over the iPhone, but I’ll stick to writing for now.

The initial excitement of the iPhone announcement is beginning to wane and now that we have some time to think and digest what we all went through last week, we can consider some of the true implications of this device.

Steve Jobs claims that Apple had reinvented the cellphone with the iPhone. Upon hearing this, I was actually convinced it was true, despite it being such a broad and self-serving assertion. I mean, how can you look at that device and not say “wow” - it offers an experience unlike any other cellphone / smartphone / handheld device available today.

But did Apple really reinvent the cellphone, or did they reinvent something else? Seth Godin has a fantastic perspective of why Apple didn’t fundamentally change anything about the cellphone or fundamental cellphone experience. It still rings when someone calls you, it can still interrupt you, you still put someone on hold when another call is coming in, etc.

Seth then offers some compelling ideas for how you really could reinvent the cellphone experience. Here are a couple:

Let me initiate conference calls with groups of people with just one directory entry.

Let me call friends based on where they are at a given moment.

Let me queue up people who want to talk with me and work my way through the list in a way that works for both of us.

Now that would be reinventing the cellphone!

The problem is, that Apple can’t affect some of those things by themselves. It requires an interaction with the network switching infrastructure that can’t be controlled by just a device. Perhaps the coming IMS technology will be able to provide a way to do some of these things.

No, what Apple reinvented was not the cellphone, but the cellphone user interface. The 3.5 inch screen, the single front button, the multi-touch animated figure-out-what-you’re-typing UI is what makes us all say “wow”. And rightly so - no other handheld device works with you - as opposed to against you - as much as the iPhone does, in my opinion.

Let’s give the ample credit where it’s due, but let’s remember that while the iPhone can reinvent the way you interact with your cellphone / PDA / mobile internet, there are some fundamentals of the cellphone experience that won’t change.