My iPhone Test Drive
Ok, so shame on me for writing so much about the iPhone without actually having used it, but I fixed that today by spending a couple of hours in an Apple store playing with the iPhone. Granted this is much more limited than the experience of long-term use …
Context & Ripple Effects
A week after iPhones began reaching retail, commentary is still running ahead of hands-on use: this piece follows last week's first-impressions writeups with the author admitting he had covered the device extensively before ever touching one, then spending two hours with a display unit at an Apple store. That gap between coverage and contact is itself the story — the launch has so dominated cellphone news that it drowned out competing announcements like T-Mobile's, while most writers, like most buyers, have only read about the device.
Two confirmed frictions frame what a tester actually encounters: Apple has excluded Adobe Flash from the platform, and a video circulating among developers criticizes that stance. Meanwhile reports — unconfirmed — say Apple is demanding a significant share of network revenues from its European carrier partner and requiring partners to restrict the content iPhone users can access.
First-order effects
- For shoppers, the Apple store floor becomes the decisive trial channel: a couple of hours on a display unit is now how skeptics and reviewers alike convert secondhand coverage into a buy or pass judgment.
- Developers critical of the missing Adobe Flash support get their test case the moment real users try to browse the real web on the device.
Second-order effects
- If Apple genuinely holds its reported demands in Europe — a cut of network revenues plus content restrictions — every carrier negotiation shifts from subsidizing handsets to fighting over who owns the customer relationship.
- Rivals whose launch-week announcements were buried under iPhone coverage are forced to respond on Apple's terms: demo-driven selling rather than spec sheets.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward a structural inversion of mobile industry power, where the handset maker, not the carrier, dictates content access and takes a share of service revenue — a fight that will define the smartphone era if the reported European terms hold.
- Platform exclusions like the Flash omission signal that whoever controls the device also curates the mobile web, making developer backlash a recurring feature rather than a one-off.
The trend: The iPhone launch marks the shift of the handset from a carrier-subsidized commodity to an experiential product sold through demo floors, with Apple contesting carriers for control of both revenue and content access.