Time Magazine Names iPhone “Invention of the Year”
Choosing Time Magazine’s invention of the year isn’t always an easy task — I know because I had to do it more than once. But this year, in my humble opinion, the decision was a no-brainer. Lev Grossman, who reviewed Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone for Time when it came out in June, edited the Inventions section and wrote the lead story, which I’ve reproduced in full below (Time is Fortune’s sister publication and Lev is a friend). To see the rest of the selections, you can go to TIME.com. Or you can buy the magazine.
Invention of the Year: The iPhone
By Lev Grossman
Stop. I mean, don’t stop reading this, but stop thinking what you’re about to think. Or, O.K., I’ll think it for you:
The thing is hard to type on. It’s too slow. It’s too big. It doesn’t have instant messaging. It’s too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it’s too cheap!) It doesn’t support my work e-mail. It’s locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we’re sick of hearing about it! Yes, there’s been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple’s iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:
1. The iPhone is pretty
Most high-tech companies don’t take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs’ basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won’t do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.
An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into “airplane” mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.
2. It’s touchy-feely
Apple didn’t invent the touchscreen. Apple didn’t even reinvent it (Apple probably acquired its much hyped multitouch technology when it snapped up a company called Fingerworks in 2005). But Apple knew what to do with it. Apple’s engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.
This is, as engineers say, nontrivial. It’s part of a new way of relating to computers. Look at the success of the Nintendo Wii. Look at Microsoft’s new Surface Computing division. Look at how Apple has propagated its touchscreen interface to the iPod line with the iPod Touch. Can it be long before we get an iMac Touch? A TouchBook? Touching is the new seeing.
3. It will make other phones better
Jobs didn’t write the code inside the iPhone. These days he doesn’t dirty his fingers with 1’s and 0’s, if he ever really did. But he did negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone. That’s important: one reason so many cell phones are lame is that cell-phone-service providers hobble developers with lame rules about what they can and can’t do. AT&T gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They’re demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.
4. It’s not a phone, it’s a platform
When Apple made the iPhone, it didn’t throw together some cheap-o bare-bones firmware. It took OS X, its full-featured desktop operating system, and somehow squished it down to fit inside the iPhone’s elegant glass-and-stainless-steel case. That makes the iPhone more than just a gadget. It’s a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name. One of the big trends of 2007 was the idea that computing doesn’t belong just in cyberspace, it needs to happen here, in the real world, where actual stuff happens. The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them.
And this is just the beginning. Platforms are for building on. Last month, after a lot of throat-clearing, Apple decided to open up the iPhone, so that you—meaning people other than Apple employees—will be able to develop software for it too. Ever notice all that black blank space on the iPhone’s desktop? It’s about to fill up with lots of tiny, pretty, useful icons.
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come
The iPhone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it’ll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve. Look at the iPod of six years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky touchwheel! It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that’s going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You’ll have one in a few years. It’ll be very cool. And it’ll be even cheaper.
First off I own and love my iPhone.
Secondly I don’t know why our layman’s definition of invention has to come from the US Patent Office.
Third thing though is this: Apple filed over 300 patents relating to the iPhone, so if it’s not an invention I don’t know what is. They streamlined several things in order to conserve battery power, be operable by touch on a small screen, and generally be intuitive. An invention can be something as simple as a paper bag with handles that go all the way around to support groceries more reliably. Surely the iPhone counts as an invention.
Finally: these things are amazing. I’m not a Mac lover, I’ve loathed them all my life. I ignored the iPhone on principle, and then I realized that it was actually quite revolutionary and wasn’t just a desperate attempt to put email and “the PDA internet” on a cellphone, but it actually has features that everyone can use and the internet it gives is normal and intuitively accessible.
Invention or not, the iPhone is cool.
If you don’t have one, buy one. If you can’t afford one, steal one. Stop being losers and get an iPhone. Me and all of the cool people with iPhones do not care about technical issues. We just care about attracting attractive, fun, cool, and sexy people to hang with.
The iPhone could be the cure for your loserism!
Tony from SanFran,
Apple worshippers’ may believe anything they want but this does not change the fact that iPhone does not logically fit the definition of invention, (I will state it again) because it is neither a “process, machine” nor “improvement, etc., that did not exist previously”. You may want to stretch your logic over the limit and attempt to argue that such combination did not exist (it was e.g., various Windows Mobile devices, as much as you may hate them) but the definition (and practice) specifically excludes “combinations” from being recognised as inventions under patent law.
You argue, by bizarre reverse-logic that if iPhone in not an “invention”, then the proverbial light-bulb also isn’t, but it does not work logically because the “way in which” “glass and filaments and metal” “come together” in Edison’s lightbulb WAS new, and NOBODY combined it like that before, so that it was a “new, useful process”, which does fall under the formal definition of “invention”.
If Edison was “not the first to make” the lightbulb, then he is credited with the invention by mistake, but it does not change the logic of my argument nor does it prove your flawed one.
Let me analogise, a better lightbulb (say one that combines a switch on it and is painted red) wud not qualify as an “invention”, at least not outside Jobs’ reality distortion field.
“Please_ It is NOT a computer if you CAN’T TYPE ON IT!!!”
By that persons definition, computers were not used to get us to the moon, and those nanobots to be used in the near future for heart surgery are not computers either.
Right.
I think the iPhone is an invention, as much so the light bulb was an invention. Light bulbs were made of glass and filaments and metal, but the way in which they come together makes it a light bulb. And who gets credited for the invention? Edison. Even though he was not the first to make one. But he did perfect it.
While I agree somewhat with previous comments that the iPhone isn’t technically a “new” invention, it’s more a “re-invention” of existing tech to a “new” cell phone, the iPhone is still a pretty cool groundbreaking device. I am an Apple user for many years, and I don’t like the way Steve Jobs/Apple act sometimes, they have been successful in promoting & building an innovative style of computing that is lacking in boring old windoze machines. When you buy an Apple product, you’re paying for style, elegance, and better integration of all these different technical peices into a beautiful whole. So while Time is not really accurate - what mainstream media company is accurate anyway these days ? - with calling it the “Best Invention”, it is an amazing gadget and does deserve recognition.
Please_ It is NOT a computer if you CAN’T TYPE ON IT!!!
It IS a wonderful pocket combo: music player and phone. For that reason alone it deserves the award for preserving Apple’s dominance for years to come.
Will all those who complain that the iPhone is not an invention PLEASE give a suitable alternative!!!
I don’t own an iPod or iPhone, nor do I care much for Apple or their stuff-it-down-your-throat marketing strategy, but the iPhone does qualify under the “improvement” clause of invention as is worthy of the “Invention of the year” because rather than incrementally improve the phone/PDA/hand-held computer market, it raised the bar significantly. The iPhone stands out in a crowded market, which, in my opinion, no other product/item/invention can say for year 2007.
Call it the ‘Best Marketing of the Year!’ … Another example of Marketing killing true innovation!
You have to be kidding. You guys really need some science-saavy folks on staff who can recognize the difference between a groundbreaking invention and a sexy little communications gadget.
invention of the year? are you kidding?
the iphone isn’t an “invention”, it’s an incremental modificiation of existing technologies.
I think you are still well inside the reality distortion field
Dan from Richmond,
no disrespect too but:
I dont say that iPhone is a bad product. I just say that this is another example of Apple-sucking by the media, since the iPhone can not be an “invention”, as I explain in logical rather than argumentative way. With such free promotion, it is no wonder that Apple products “sell themselves”. the job of Apple marketing dept must be the easiest in the world - as long as you have a product, the media raves and the wud be cools buy!
by the way, Time has a particularly lame record of choosing various “{x} of the year”, if you remember last year they chose “you” as the man of the year, i mean gimme a break…
Oh and one more thing, if i were you, I wud not “loan my iPhone” to complete strangers…
A transparent ploy by TIME to sell more magazines to the Apple fanboys. Invention? What is exactly new about it? The only thing that’s new is charging full retail for it with no subsidy, and still imposing an ETF. Oh, and the “revenue sharing” between AT&T and AAPL of $18 per month per activated iPhone. The fanboys screamed at NBC’s attempt to get a cut of iPod sales in exchange for selling its content on iTunes, but not a disparaging word is said about Cupertino when AAPL does it. The only thing this article gets right is that the iPhone will be a ghost in 5 years. It’s already been surpassed by competing devices released after it. AAPL is in a totally different market here. It’s not competing against MSFT with its glacial pace of new product intros. The cellphone manufacturers crank out new products multiple times a year. 1.4 million units sold? I’ll bet Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, et al are shaking in their boots. Give me a break.
Wow invention of the year. Cell phone of the year would be more apropriate. Seriously?? Seriously??
I’ll give you its an awesome phone but this seems a bit far fetched. And yes it is still just a phone.
Asher, no disrespect, but the London market hasn’t seen the iPhone. As individual technologies, the iPhone doesn’t break new ground, but as a collection of technologies, the iPhone may very well be the best hi-tech consumer product in history. I loan my iPhone to complete strangers and people with no computer literacy and yet in seconds they are using the device. The iPhone has it’s weaknesses, but the hype is still warranted.
Asher Pat’s comment is more entertaining than the article! I suggest CNN offer the editorial job to Asher….
Another of Apple-priest singing praises to the Cult.
An “invention” is defined by US Patent Law as:
“a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius, as distinguished from ordinary mechanical skill or craftsmanship.”
Since NOTHING in iPhone can be said to “not exist previously” (as the writer himself admits), calling iPhone an “invention”, is at best, a stretch, in reality, wrong.
The best “gadget” of the year, most likely, but not an invention. To all those “cool” media types that feel the urge to promote Apple as some kind of friendly neighbourhood underdog against the corporate evils of the likes of Microsoft, note that the market capitalisation of your “anti-capitalist” company fast approaching that of your bogey and it is a predatory monopolist in key markets (like MP3s, music). Pls stop this Apple-sucking evanglism, for when everybody is converted, there will be no need for the missionalries and then what will you support? Wil it be the new underdog - Microsoft?
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
I can’t decide what still surprises me more; the amount of hate-spew that Apple seems to evoke from all the tech-envy sufferers in the world, or the inability of those sufferers to actually write in complete sentences or even spell correctly.
Listen, what alternative to Apple would you philistines prefer? “Down-your-throat marketing”? Really? I happen to find every piece of print and broadcast advertising created for Apple products to be visually and audibly appealing and in perfect taste. In fact, if all advertising were as well done as Apple’s, I might give my Tivo a break once in awhile and actually watch a commercial now and then.
And if you’re just so hell-bent on loathing Apple because they won’t let poor little you keep your Sprint contract and still get an iPhone like all the cool people you know, then at the very least appreciate the fact that EVERYTHING Apple brings to market just makes EVERYONE else play catch-up (or try anyway) and forces the market to actually improve! Get it?