I can't wait to see what they do to the hardware industry. I have had my iPhone for a day and already my macbook pro feels like an arcane instrument. I am so used to touching the screen that a trackpad feels distant and uncontrolled. I really think that what apple did is as big a ui leap as the the mouse. I don't think that multi-touch will stop at handhelds.
Here's to hoping they change the cell industry too!
A friend whose opinion I respect says that the iPhone is the real deal-- that it's so good that it will shift the balance of power in favor of device manufacturers, and reduce the carriers to a commodity.
Which makes me think that there will be no "last great battle" for the PC. Just sync your iPhone with every piece of data in the universe by plugging it into some to-be-determined shaped hole in your wall.
It's funny--I was in bad shape for a bit with my wife yesterday. But then I let her play with it and browse the net and she ended up really liking it.
So far both Reddit and news.yc work perfectly. My Netvibes is a bit off due to some Javascript issue, but other than that it's been great for browsing.
I tried it today with my webapp too, and it worked great - with one exception. Whenever you have to type unusual characters it takes several extra keystrokes. But the zooming and viewing is simply amazing - I can fully use my webapp on a phone - wow. But being a bootstrapping startup founder, I can't justify buying it yet - I'll have to wait for the cheaper and more powerful version later on.
Here's to hoping they change the cell industry too!
(posted from an iPhone)