The iPhone - A Few Thoughts
Ten years on, the iPhone has taken us back as many steps as it has taken us forward Leandro Soriano Marcolino , Lancaster University The 10th anniversary of the Apple iPhone reminds us that while it was not the first smartphone , it was the first to achieve mass-market appeal. Since then the iPhone has defined the approach that other smartphone manufacturers have taken. Smartphones have transformed our lives, essentially giving us an internet-connected computer in our pocket. But while we’re distracted by Candy Crush or Pokemon Go , we are losing freedoms. We are losing control of our own devices, and losing access to the information they contain – in the very same devices that are increasingly important in our life. To see how far we’ve come, consider that personal desktop computers only became widespread with the IBM PC . By designing the PC with an open architecture, an enormous industry of PC-compatible products from other manufacturers sprang up. It’s the same today: whe...