I spent a brief ten minutes playing with an iPhone in an Apple store this week -- and remembered that it was a phone only after I had left the store.

In conversations since with people who have only seen the marketing and not the real thing what struck me was their disbelief that it really is as easy to use and as responsive as it is made out to be. Apple still has a credibility gap, but with the iPhone that will be narrowed considerably more than has been achieved with the iPod. There are a ton of non-iPod people out there who are phone buyers and those people, even if they only drop by an Apple store to kick the tires (or just know someone who has), will have that gap closed considerably.

So just what is iPhone?

It's a new word, created for the world to absorb and enjoy.

That's all it is: a new word. iPhone is less a thing, or even a family of things, than it is a word to symbolize an experience. Apple did this already with the Mac. It's Welcome To Macintosh, not Welcome To The Macintosh. And with the iPod. Always iPod, never the iPod. It's the press and you and me that gets this wrong.

Here's a diagram I published in March 2006 in a posting entitled Possession, Function, Access, and Emotion.:

It was about the iPod at the time, but look how well it fits the iPhone. iPhone is all of these elements, as is the Mac. This is why Apple is so hard to beat in the marketplace. iPhone (the object of possession) will change. iPhone (the functionality) will change. iPhone (the emotional connection) will change. iPhone (the access it offers) will change. But iPhone as a whole will not because it is all of these expressed as one. iPhone is not just a glimpse of the future, it's a glimpse of the now.

Tags: iPhone, Fun, Apple Store, Possession, Function, Access, Emotion