31 July 2008 No Comment

The iPhone is not a “phone” any more than my laptop computer is a phone. The iPhone can make phone calls, but so can my laptop. I could call your phone using my voice-over-IP system, and you wouldn’t know the difference. I can even put a card in my laptop that enables communication over a cellular network.

The iPhone has a 412MHz processor, 128MB of RAM, wi-fi, bluetooth, and several gigabytes of storage. It has an operating system, and runs applications written in the same programming language that one can use to write programs for any OS X desktop system. The current list of applications available for the iPhone includes wiki software, an office suite, financial management programs, and of course an e-mail client and web browser.

Just because it fits in your pocket does not mean that it isn’t a computer. As the specifications of the hardware and the diversity of available proprietary applications indicate, it’s a general-purpose device. This is a simple case of applying the “duck test” — If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

Any resemblance to an “appliance” or “just a phone” is the result of artificial restrictions imposed by Apple via software. It is backwards to allow the severity of these restrictions, which limit what users can do with the device, to be used as justification for whitewashing ethical concerns that are intrinsic to general-purpose computers. These restrictions give Apple unprecedented and unjust control over iPhone users.

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