From today's NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/opinion/29fri4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
Eating the iPhone
And what is the iPhone line for? The same as the Harry Potter line. A little magic, a new installment in a familiar story, the hope of being surprised. Perhaps a few of the people queuing on the street or online for this new device really do need a new cellphone or digital music player. But mostly what they need what we all need is the new itself, and the intensity of that need is not to be denied.
Absurd as it is, theres a strange communal pleasure in how public the anticipation has been. For a moment or two, there is the possibility that this device will turn out to be that alien object we all long to hold, that completely transforms our sense of the world around us. All it will take to bring us back to earth is a wrong number or a dropped call.
Whatever else it does, the iPhone does bring a little 3-dimensional, visual transparency to technologies that have flattened out as they have become familiar. It creates the illusion of looking into it rather than at it, as if you were peering into the depths of a clear electronic pond. It is also a multifunctional device that illustrates its multifunctionality revealing and demonstrating the transformations it undergoes as it changes jobs. This is perhaps the iPhones cleverest trick: dramatizing its cleverness for the user.
Most of the early adopters the ones who will have iPhones in their hands today are used to devouring new technologies, and that is no empty metaphor. The real test of each new apparatus is how easily it is ingested and how quickly it becomes part of the users metabolism. All you have to do is watch a 9-year-old teaching her mother how to text to understand the truth of this. The difference between getting the newest new device and going on using your old one is the difference between eating a wonderful meal and merely having a metabolism. Whether it works, whether it sells, whether it lives up to its promises, it has been a while since there was a morsel as edible as the iPhone
Eating the iPhone
And what is the iPhone line for? The same as the Harry Potter line. A little magic, a new installment in a familiar story, the hope of being surprised. Perhaps a few of the people queuing on the street or online for this new device really do need a new cellphone or digital music player. But mostly what they need what we all need is the new itself, and the intensity of that need is not to be denied.
Absurd as it is, theres a strange communal pleasure in how public the anticipation has been. For a moment or two, there is the possibility that this device will turn out to be that alien object we all long to hold, that completely transforms our sense of the world around us. All it will take to bring us back to earth is a wrong number or a dropped call.
Whatever else it does, the iPhone does bring a little 3-dimensional, visual transparency to technologies that have flattened out as they have become familiar. It creates the illusion of looking into it rather than at it, as if you were peering into the depths of a clear electronic pond. It is also a multifunctional device that illustrates its multifunctionality revealing and demonstrating the transformations it undergoes as it changes jobs. This is perhaps the iPhones cleverest trick: dramatizing its cleverness for the user.
Most of the early adopters the ones who will have iPhones in their hands today are used to devouring new technologies, and that is no empty metaphor. The real test of each new apparatus is how easily it is ingested and how quickly it becomes part of the users metabolism. All you have to do is watch a 9-year-old teaching her mother how to text to understand the truth of this. The difference between getting the newest new device and going on using your old one is the difference between eating a wonderful meal and merely having a metabolism. Whether it works, whether it sells, whether it lives up to its promises, it has been a while since there was a morsel as edible as the iPhone