Time magazine has announced the Apple iPhone as the “invention of the year.” They praised the iPhone’s design, its innovative touch screen, and its ability to offer a wonderful improvement to the industry’s structure of mobile computing.

Although they have enumerated a couple of good features unique to the iPhone, they have fairly acknowledged its flaws: the on-screen keyboard was a bit difficult to type on, the size of the device: it was a quite big as a mobile phone, absence of instant messaging, not compatible for work e-mails of most people and locked to AT&T. However, Time Magazine considered that these flaws do not surpass the five great features they cited.

First is the iPhone’s aesthetic feature. The overall design of the iPhone was able to match the technology it has, making it fairly easy to use without having to turn to the manual for instructions. Steve Jobs actually believed that good design is as vital as good technology.

As Lev Grossman, a Time technology writer said in the article announcing the choice of the magazine, “All the cool features in the world won’t do you any good unless you can figure out how to use the said features and feel smart and attractive while doing it.”

Second is the iPhone’s touch screen. Although it was not Apple who invented it and as Grossman says, “Apple did not even reinvent it.” What Apple did was have its engineers create a new type of interface. Apple was able to design this fresh interface that was able to provide users with the illusion that they are actually operating the iPhone and their data using their

fingers. Consumers can use them to browse through album covers, resize photos and click links.

“This is, as engineers say, nontrivial,” Grossman stated. “It’s part of a new way of relating to computers… Touching is the new seeing…” It was also said in on review that the multi-touch technology offered something new, unique and interactive.

Third is how the creation of the iPhone can give other mobile phone developers the freedom for innovation. Apple made sure that they have the last say in the design and engineering of the device and that the iPhone would be built using their own specifications. Steve Jobs negotiated with AT&T to distribute the iPhone exclusively so that they would be able to do this.

This is because nowadays, a lot of mobile service providers take control in the development of phones. This step that Apple has taken proved to the market that the phone manufacturers would always know more in the design and functionality of phones than mobile service providers.

Fourth is the decision made by Apple to design the iPhone as an authentic handheld computer. This is because the phone operated on a Mac OS X version specially made for mobile phone use, this makes the iPhone a platform that can run Web applications and other software.

As Grossman further said, “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.”

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