I’ve been thinking lately about the iPhone and its best use case, and that has prompted this article. I am unsure if the iPhone is best suited to be the center of our digital lives versus some of the other devices Apple sells, and I’d like to explore that here.

Obviously, the primary reason Apple has chosen to make the iPhone the center of their entire ecosystem is that it is their best-selling product. It is one of the most successful products in history, and a company would be foolish not to build around it. But is it the best device for its purpose?

The iPhone (as well the other smartphones) is most useful to people because of its portability and intuitiveness, not its power, or immersive capabilities. It is obviously extremely convenient to have a very capable computer wherever you are, but does that make it good, per se? If you wanted a more portable device, it’s tough to beat an Apple Watch. If you wanted a more immersive (and intuitive) device, an iPad is the tool for the job. If more power is what you’re after, then the Mac is the most powerful product that Apple sells, in terms of raw horsepower. The iPhone isn’t the best at any of those things! But, not only is it the most popular, it is so much more popular than the alternatives that Apple has willingly embraced this seemingly less capable product as the center of computing. So what changed, and what is required of computers so that regular people will be able to fulfill their computing needs sufficiently?

The Internet

Before the iPhone, and in its infancy, the personal computer was still viewed as the most important platform. This is made clear by the fact that you couldn’t even set up the first few iPhone models without using iTunes, which was only available on a PC (I am including the Mac in the term PC). The personal computer was the only real option up to this point, as flip-phones weren’t as capable, the “smartphones” of the time were too clunky and unintuitive, and the PC had the best web-browsing experience. At this point (c. 2003-2009), the internet was growing quite popular and becoming integral into people’s lives, so having the best web-browsing possible was what would define the primary computers. That in many ways is still the case today. That is, in my view, why the PC was so important. It was: 1. The best internet communicator, and, 2. The only viable option because of that.

Then comes the iPhone. It provides a new way to connect to the internet, and it is extremely popular and portable. In its early days, one of the most important elements of progress was moving to 3G, allowing the internet to load much faster than before. This, along with growing popularity, made it the primary way the internet was accessed. This meant that apps and websites were suddenly becoming mobile-first, rather than focusing on PC’s like that had in the past. So now we have mobile phones becoming very popular, extremely convenient, and highly optimized for the web. This is important.

Convenience

A computer’s job is to make its user’s life more convenient. This is why they have grown in popularity as they have become easier to use. The more communal computers in the old days were not very convenient. The first PCs with GUIs (Graphical User Interface) were more convenient, but not extremely so. When the internet became popular, they suddenly become extremely useful, and the first viable laptops increase the convenience further. In the same way, phones had the same path. Phone booths, then phones attached to the wall, then large phones that were portable, then small phones that were portable. As both of these technologies progressed, each iteration eventually became more popular than the last, because most people want convenient computers. That is their job.

The iPhone is the most convenient general internet communicator to ever exist. This is found both in its portability but also its intuitiveness. It is remarkable that most children can be handed an iPhone or iPad and discover how to use it naturally. They are SO easy to use that they are often overused, but that is another problem. This must be considered some of the greatest design possible; being so intuitive that people naturally understand how to use it.

Summary

To summarize, what makes the iPhone and all smartphones so successful, in my eyes, is that they provide the most convenient way to access the internet. This is why it is the most popular computing device in history, and why it is a viable center of Apple’s ecosystem. The Apple Watch may be more convenient, but it can’t really communicate with the web. The iPad may be more immersive in how it accesses the internet, but it’s not as convenient. The Mac may be the most powerful, but it’s not as intuitive. The iPhone is the best hybrid device currently available, and any future attempt by technology to usurp it will have to be better at web access and more convenient to have a chance (but even then, it would still have to overcome the fact that the web is mostly optimized for mobile at this point. That shouldn’t be ignored). However, it should be noted that the pitfalls of the iPhone (immersive capabilities and quality of web consumption, hyper portability, and power), leave room for other devices to exist, and is why Apple makes the iPad (and Vision Pro), Apple Watch (and AirPods), and Mac (and perhaps Vision Pro again here). But that is why the iPhone is the core piece of hardware for most people’s computing ecosystems, but it is made possible by the cloud and software, which is a discussion for another time…