"Still, all of these things can be done without. I can fortunately afford other cell phones, so I use whichever phone best fits the task I have going at any time. In some cases, the iPhone is the best, like for internet browsing and email and texting. But since I have a laptop, I tend to wait until I'm near the big screen and keyboard for even those things.
"If I could have only one cell phone then, hands down, it would be the iPhone."
How has the iPhone changed the way you engage with your mobile?
"I'm not sure what this question is. I have a constantly-travelling life. Sometimes in airports it's nice to check for email or look something up on the web. But my main internet life is rather huge and I prefer my laptop. I also don't want to be one of those people who constantly pulls out their phone to check email during lunches and dinners. That's as rude as taking a bunch of calls. We go through stages and I predict that those who do this sort of thing will stop after a while, except for a few diehards who only hang around techies like themselves."
What can Apple do to maintain the iPhone's momentum?
"Keep the iPhone features and model selections from getting out of hand. Feature bloat is worse than missing features. It's a matter of fine-tuning the markets more than anything else. Invisible improvements in speed, memory size, screen quality, battery life and the like are important. Marketing can study where certain problems inhibit large numbers of people and then get improvements implemented in applications like in the browser with Flash, for example."
What will be its lasting legacy?
"One of the big hit products of all time. A product that is like another entire company within Apple."
Is the iPhone Newton 2.0?
"I never once thought that, and I loved my MessagePads. It's odd you would ask that but I used to love carrying my Newton and taking notes, in addition to many other things. On the Newton I would type a phrase the way my brain thought of it, like 'Sara dentist Tuesday 2 PM' and the Newton would open the calendar and make the entry. The iPhone is more structured (left brainish?) with apps you have to run and procedures to follow to get things like this entered. On the Newton I would hand-write 'call Jim' and it would emit the touch tones to phone Jim. I miss the dreams of computing equipment that the Newton brought to me."
Is the iPhone as revolutionary as the Apple II?
"No. I hate to say that but I'm an engineer in my heart and have to tell the truth. The Apple II brought the concept of computing equipment in the home to all of us. It was like something that never existed, and almost every new hardware and software app changed our view of the world and shocked and amazed us. There was a revolution going on.
"The iPhone is more an example of creating the most excellent product in a market that existed. It didn't do new things, it just did them better.
"After some time it may be possible to look back and see that the iPhone really made smartphones go for people. The Model T was not the first car but it was key to the driving revolution. The Apple II compares to the Model T but, because the cell phone and smartphone markets were already huge, the word 'revolutionary' is harder to apply to the iPhone. Clearly the iPhone is a major step, but we forget many such major steps."
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