We expect a qualitatively different kind of experience with a phone or handheld than we do with a computer. After all, programs crash and even with my less-than-awesome typing skills, I’d often get ahead of Microsoft Word. Perhaps there’s something to the more basic level of tasks expected from a handheld device.
Sure, your old cassette Walkman never crashed, but could it use GPS to tell you exactly where you were? On the other hand, I’m not computing the history of the universe here; I just want to make a call or perhaps e-mail a picture. The iPhone is something we can hold in our hands, not a large, mysterious HAL-like machine — but it’s still a computer of sorts.
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