Apple Thoughts: What We're Thankful For: Apple Edition

Thanks, iPhone

by Vincent Ferrari, Executive Editor

On June 29, 2007, my wife and I sat outside the Apple Store at The Westchester waiting to be next in line for the original iPhone. There were about 85 people ahead of us and roughly 300 people behind us. I bonded with some people on the line and had one of the best experiences I've ever had as an Apple customer. They gave us bottled water, Starbucks coffee, and all kinds of other fun stuff. When I got the phone home and started using it, I realized just how amazing it really was.

Oh sure it wasn't perfect, and even after a few software updates and a hardware revision later, it still isn't even close to perfect. It is, however, perfect for my needs. There are times now when I leave my laptop at home altogether, opting to travel light with my music, movies, contacts, e-mail, and web browser all in my pocket. I've never in my life found one phone that was able to replace as many devices for me as efficiently as the iPhone does. Are there things I'd like to see improved? Sure. Notes syncing, the push notification system, an actual To Do app, and better battery life would all be nice things to have, but none of those things are preventing me from getting a ton of solid usage out of my iPhone. Now that there's an application store, I even have applications that let me SSH into servers at work and fix things or FTP in and clear files / logs. In the end, despite its shortcomings, this is a phone whose features I use and rely on every single day.

I'm thankful that Apple thought outside the box and designed a user-friendly UI from the ground up made for touching (not stylus-tapping). I'm thankful that Apple didn't go into this with the idea that they were going to make "another phone." Most of all, I'm really happy that their design aesthetics have caught on with the masses and the iPhone is a gigantic success.

I couldn't get through my day without my iPhone, and as far as Apple goes, it's the thing that I'm most thankful for.