iPhone: Apple reinvents the phone
Tuesday, January 9, 2007. Remember that date as it will long be remembered as the date when Apple once again changed everything with the introduction of the iPhone. While Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, billed the iPhone as the reinvention of the phone, they didn’t reinvent the phone. What they really did was give us a device that will redefine our sense of mobile community.
Think about it.
Steve said that the device is a phone, an ipod, and an Internet communicator in one. But it’s more than that. It is a full-fledged computing platform that promises to completely redefine the EXPERIENCE of mobile communications, mobile information, moble content creation, mobile content sharing, and mobile interaction. It’s the first device that promises to change the way we experience all these elements.
Those of us in the technology field have foreseen the trend towards convergence–the trend where a single device takes on the functions of previously stand-along devices. So, we saw cell phones gain cameras and cell phone cameras gain PDA functionality. Apple didn’t just converge things. They converged them in an unprecedented way so that (it appears) the device itself is organic in the way that it will perform these tasks. From it’s design, interface, and method for interaction–your finger!–the iPhone promises to be the first of a series of forthcoming devices that will change the way that we as individuals interact with our devices and how we use these devices to interact with one other.
In the same way that the iPod was never really “just” an MP3 player, so too the iPhone will certainly not be just another mobile phone.
The mobile social revolution has begun. Just as the Internet provided a new platform of opportunity for outreach and evangelism, so too will this new generation of mobile interaction present us with new challenges and opportunities in our Christian faith.
