Apple has a knack for introducing phase shifting technology, first the Apple II, then the Mac with its graphical interface, then HyperCard, OS X, the iPod, and now the iPhone (yeah, I know I left out a lot, and went through the years pretty quicktly, but you can't list it all).  The iPhone has the potential to be an entirely new mobile platform, capable of standing on its own, independent of PCs or laptops, and certainly much more then traditional cell phones.

What's critical to understand about the iPhone is that it is not just another cell phone.  it is a completely new platform, capable of performing many of the same tasks we consider only possible with a desktop or latptop computer.  It will (and has already) changed much of what we formerly thought cell phones were capable of.  Now iPhone users can surf the web in almost fully web-enabled ways (it's not yet capable of running Java scripts and other such code-reliant applications), including audio and video.  And many games that formerly were only available on a full-sized computer are now, or soon will be, able to be run on an iPhone with a similar (and in some cases, better) user experience than on a computer.

Why are games on the  iPhone significant?  After all, what relation could they possibly have with education?  Well, they can have a huge implication for education, and not just because our students play them all the time (often to the detriment of their school work), but because if a technology platform can run today's video games, then it's capable of running just about anything.  Games are very demanding of processor speed, memory, video resolution and refresh rates -- all the technical aspects that those of us in education mostly dream about.  So if you see games on any platform that's a sure sign that educators can use it for many of the high-end, multimediated, applications that we want to use.

Now go a step further.  The iPhone is not just another cell phone, it's an entirely new platform.  Take the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) and resize it (larger, that is, not smaller).  What do you have then? Something approaching what we currently call a laptop, but without a keyboard or a mouse/trackpad.  Running on touch technology, but with the power and capacity of a full laptop and voila!  suddenly you've got a very interesting device for education!  In fact, there are already rumors (some are very specific) that Apple will be bringing out a larger form-factor iPod Touch (or will it be a larger form-factor iPhone) in the fall of 2009.