iPhony
WHY APPLE'S NEW CELL PHONE ISN'T REALLY REVOLUTIONARY. — When the word iPhone appears in Apple press releases, the word revolutionary is rarely far behind. But what counts as revolutionary? In Apple's case, the bar is high. Since the 1970s, the firm has changed both the personal computer and music industries.
Context & Ripple Effects
Slate's skeptical take lands on launch day itself, capping nearly six months of attention since Apple announced the iPhone on January 9th. The piece follows the outlet's own Apple Suck-Up Watch critique of breathless Apple coverage, and sits alongside the New York Times' Often-Asked iPhone Questions buyer's guide — together they mark the moment the press shifted from amplifying Apple's framing to interrogating it.
The launch-day record cuts both ways: enthusiastic crowds lined up and early reviews said the device lives up to its hype, yet scattered reports of iTunes activation failures circulated unconfirmed, PC World put the $500-$600 phone through a durability test, and contrary to sell-out rumors the handsets were reportedly plentiful. Against that backdrop, Slate's argument leans on Apple's own history — the firm that transformed personal computing since the 1970s and remade the music business — to ask whether 'revolutionary' is doing real work.
First-order effects
- Buyers paying $500-$600 on day one faced scattered, still-unconfirmed iTunes activation failures — an operational test of Apple's computer-plus-phone integration pitch arriving immediately after purchase.
- Slate's 'iPhony' framing directly contests the 'revolutionary' language in Apple's own press materials, forcing the definitional battle over what the device actually changed to run alongside the sales numbers.
Second-order effects
- Rival handset makers now have to position against Apple's claim rather than ignore it — the market conversation shifts from feature lists to whether touch-and-software design constitutes a new category.
- Plentiful stock contradicting the anticipated sell-out removes scarcity from the story, so press judgment rests on the product experience itself rather than demand theater — raising the bar for how rivals' launches get covered too.
Third-order effects
- If the skeptics are wrong and the phone follows the PC and music playbook, the structural question moves to who controls the phone industry's distribution and software layers — the part of the stack Apple historically rewrote last.
- The deeper pattern this launch cements is the mega-launch as media event: months-long pre-announcement hype, saturation coverage, then a corrective wave — a cycle that will shape how every major consumer-tech introduction gets judged.
The trend: Consumer electronics launches are turning into six-month media narratives where a company's self-description and the press's counter-framing compete to define whether a product opens a new category.