More tangential thoughts prompted by an iPhone review:

Walt Mossberg, writing for the Wall Street Journal, hit the nail on the head:

[T]he iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. [Emphasis added.] Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well ….

Maybe it’s beginning to sink in that there’s now a category of devices fitting in-between PDA’s and notebooks. They’re computers, and they’re something else. (Not every-thing else.) Apple’s iPhone and the Nokia Internet Tablet are just the first, best exemplars.

The iPhone doesn’t have a hard drive or a keyboard. It commits huge resources to its gorgeous screen and flexible OS. It’s driven largely by realization that we all want a walkaround web.

Same for the Nokia Internet Tablet.

No, they’re not competitors (except for people’s discretionary income). What I see, though, is that — different as they are — each conceptualizes the same insight. That’s why I wrote, back in January, that the iPhone validates the Internet Tablet.

It seems even clearer to me today.