Ideas Emerging

Five days ago, 16 hours after it was released, I went to an Apple Store and held the iPhone for about 90 seconds. But to be honest, that hardly even felt real. The phone was attached to the table, I had to wait in line to get my turn, it was connected to the Apple Store’s WiFi network, and I was still too giddy about the thing. I was already in love and the first date just made the crush deeper.

Yesterday, sitting by a grill and waiting for fireworks, a friend was kind enough to hand his over, and I got to use a real iPhone out in the wild. A mini-review? The Edge network is as bad as people say it is. The thing is as beautiful as you could possibly want. The lack of a keyboard felt strange, but not insurmountably so. When I was done, I’d seen all the flaws that I’d been warned about but still felt the love.

What I really want to talk about, though, is the revolutionary thing — the touchscreen interface. As I flicked through albums, stretched out web pages, and typed up an email, I suddenly realized that I’d just seen the death of my mouse.

Right now the relationship we have with computers and cell phones is artificial. Whether through a mouse and a cursor or a stylus and a keyboard, there’s a separation between us and what we want to do.

The touchscreen completely changes that. I want to make that picture bigger, I make it bigger — I don’t use a scroll wheel or a menu screen. I want to see the next album, I pick the next album — I don’t search for the name or click through the songs. That’s huge.

At the TED conference last year, Jeff Han — a researcher at NYU — introduced similar technology with a promise that it would change everything. That made sense to me on one level, but at the time, I didn’t really get how big a change that would be. Now it’s starting to sink in. Watch the video and leave a comment if you’ve got any thoughts.

- mc