iPhone – A Quantum Leap in Human Technology

Steve Jobs of Apple, Inc announced the launch of the iPhone. Everyone agrees that the phone looks great, has sufficient nextgen features to make it ‘desirable’ and are ready to buy it, as soon as it is available for everyone.

Jeff Ventura at Graceful Flavor has written a fabulous, analytical post on the iPhone that says

“From what we can tell now, the iPhone literally looks like Apple went to 2012 and returned with one of their mobile phones. It does everything I would ever want it to, and with such a seemingly graceful interface, that I would very literally consider switching from Verizon to Cingular just to get this device. It has potential to be that good.”

This is so true. Think about it (salivating is optional) a cellphone, with business apps (email, docs, more!), that can connect to to the web (voice chat via – skype, msn, yahoo, more!?), a personal digital camera (2MP, prints at 4″x6″, enough for the most of us ‘family photographers’), that has a mind blowing user interface and looks something straight out of a sci-fi spy movie!

The only downside for those of us in India is that we will probably get to use this only in 2008 (as per the available information). Don’t know if I’d switch service providers for the phone, but then again, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. (

Actually, why are phone numbers not transferable between service providers in India… but I digress).
He goes on to say

“It has potential to be a truly disruptive technology, and everyone knows it. The iPhone has rocked the mobile phone market with an example of convergence that has never before been done so well, so elegantly. Look how long it took PDAs and phones to converge to the point they are now.”

It does not just have the potential, I think it qualifies completely as a disruptive technology. This goes beyond convergence, its a quantum leap in Human Technology. What Apple has done with the iPhone is to jump from the simple convergence path to a whole new plane – one where current technological devices meet the realm of sci-fi – in realtime!

I think that not only will this phone be the standard to live upto for generations of phones ahead – it will pretty much catapult the company from being a computer plus music player seller to being a personal electronics major in the years to come.