Apple is not first company to develop a touch-screen device. In the Spring of 2005, my computer science senior project team at California State University Sacramento developed software for mobile touch screen device. The technology has been around for several years. In fact I started designing this project in August of 2004.

Even though many companies had attempted to branch consumers from the cell phone to PDA market, Apple has been the only company to be successful at making this transition seem “hip and cool”.  I acknowledge that many people use Blackberries and windows-mobile devices, but before the release of the iPhone, the mobile cell phone market lacked innovative products for consumers.

Apple has created a product which has raised the bar for graphical user interfaces. The interface is slick and has that kind of cool feeling. The iPhone is by no means a perfect product, nor do I believe iPhone will be competitive long term. What I think the iPhone has done is force mobile cell phone providers to go back to the drawing boards and create new compelling products for consumers and that is why I thank Apple.