The iPhone: a hype-tech revolution

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published June 28, 2007

If consumerism and technology got married and had a baby, it would be the iPhone. And it would be no ordinary baby, more like the next Messiah, according to the way Apple CEO Steve Jobs describes his latest brainchild.

The iPhone is "three revolutionary products" in one device that resembles its daddy - thin and clad in black. At the iPhone's christening earlier this year, Jobs described it as "a wide-screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary (there he goes again with that word) mobile phone, a breakthrough Internet communications device."

Exaggeration? Maybe. It is, after all, just a cell phone. But who would bet against the creator of the iPod, which revolutionized (yes, it's deserved in this case) the music business and sent once-moribund Apple stock soaring.

Early indications are that the iPhone will be a success, too. The texting generation, whose members talk with their thumbs, can't wait to get their hands on it. Although you can't buy the device until Friday, shoppers began lining up as early as Monday in New York and other cities.

Being in the vanguard won't be cheap. The phone starts at $499 and the lowest level of cellular service, provided only by AT&T, will cost $59.99 a month. (Odd such a new age product would use such old-fashioned psychological pricing.)

For that premium price, the iPhone offers what you can already get in other products: a cellular phone; personal digital assistant; 2-megapixel camera; mobile Web browser including e-mail; portable music player. In today's parlance, it's the latest "smartphone."

Except the iPhone promises to be more adept and elegant in its tasks than its competitors, mainly because of Apple's advanced software and sense of style. So far, it has gotten mostly good reviews. Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal called it "on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer ... (that) makes other smartphones look primitive." Of course you have to use it in an area where AT&T cellular service is good.

If you are lucky or crafty enough to be one of the first owners of an iPhone and find it doesn't live up to its hype (what could?), you can always put it on your coffee table and watch as your friends kneel in worship.

[Last modified June 27, 2007, 21:52:53]