To hell with thought-out, generally coherent entries. Let’s try something different. How about, say, a running tally of links to worthwhile articles about the iPhone? Yes, that sounds good.

“iPhone: SAND in Your Hand,” by Mike Davidson:

There are so many things to say about this iPhone that it’s hard to know where to start. To me, the single most impressive thing about it is that, like a lot of Apple products but specifically this one, there is no other company in the world capable of inventing it. How many times do you see a new product come out and you think “Damn, I wish I would have thought of that!”

The iPhone is no such product.

You couldn’t think of it, and even if you did, your finished product would be a godamned [sic] fingerpainting compared to this. It is so fulfilling to watch technology unfold like this, in the hands of the most indispensable and world-changing CEO of our lifetime. It makes all other work you may be doing in the technology world seem like peanuts.

“iPhone: The Most Revolutionary Device Since 1984,” by Jeff Croft:

The iPhone will be a huge success for the same reason the iPod has been: an incredibly seamless user experience between store, computer, and handheld device that is so easy both my Mom and my 11-year old daughter can — and do — do it. Apple’s UI designers have an incredible knack for making things that are extremely powerful and extensible, but also frighteningly easy to use. The result is universal appeal — the geeks get their jollies off the underlying technology, and everyone else can just use the damn thing without hassle. The other phone makers simply don’t have the infrastructure to compete with this. They don’t have an iTunes, they don’t have a Mac OS X, and they don’t have Jonathan Ive and his team. There’s almost nothing they can do to catch up in six months — Apple has jumped out so incredibly far ahead that they can really only bend over and take it.

“Apple’s New Calling: The iPhone,” by Time’s Lev Grossman:

It’s not quite right to call the iPhone revolutionary. It won’t create a new market, or change the entertainment industry, the way the iPod did. When you get right down to it, the device doesn’t even have that many new features—it’s not like Jobs invented voicemail, or text messaging, or conference calling, or mobile Web browsing. He just noticed that they were broken, and he fixed them.

But that’s important. When our tools don’t work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. “I think there’s almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,” says Ive. “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.” In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.