I have been reading all of the annual anniversary articles about the iPhone keynote 7 years ago. Every once in awhile I like to go back and watch the keynote over because I believe it was the best technology keynote ever delivered, Steve Jobs at his absolute best.

One thing has always struck me when Steve goes into the three revolutionary products part of the presentation. There was a widescreen iPod, a phone and a revolutionary internet communicator. What strikes me is the audience reaction to all three. The first two get very loud applause, while the third, the internet communicator, gets no applause, well a cursory clap I would say.

Why this is interesting is that 7 years later, it is the internet communicator that has been the most important one of the three. Very few people in the audience appreciated what was being introduced. In 7 years the constant communication with the internet has been the killer app.

It took the creation of the app store and third-party apps to really take full advantage of the internet communicator, but it has revolutionized our lives. I cannot remember how bad phones were before the iPhone. I had Palm Treo's, Windows Mobile and Blackberry's before I bought the first iPhone and they were all very limiting. They all fetched email (the Blackberry pushed), made calls and were decent for SMS.

There was something different when going to the internet with the iPhone. It was night and day. Also, the maps were incredible, they still are. But behind all of the data on the maps were communication to the internet. That app showed just what was possible when you could have a revolutionary internet communicator going along with a rich client application on a mobile device. Most apps that have come since have used this same model to create amazing mobile applications that the web alone cannot replicate. The brilliance of Steve Jobs was seeing the future and by announcing this functionality as he did, instead of something like an enhanced web experience, shows that he knew what the iPhone was all about. Hats off Mr. Jobs.

For every great leap forward Apple ever made, it accomplished at least as much through small steps that made its products easier, faster, thinner, lighter, more polished and/or more useful. Apple’s most important products may have been the game-changers, but its best products, always, have been those that benefited from smart, evolutionary improvements. And as far as I remember, Jobs never seemed guilty about the profits they brought.

Super article. Why does everyone want to put a fork into Apple and call them done? The product they put out on Friday is so superior to every smart phone out there. Incremental or not, they are still innovating.

The items in our new iPhone 5s' are the foundation for their next jumps. The M7 processor is the beta test for a wearable technology. The 64-bit A7 chip is the baseline to take over TV and move the low end laptop computer world into the modern era.

Remember, the time between the iPod and the iPhone was 6 years. The iPod led the way to develop the iPhone. Without the iPod, there probably never would have been an iPhone. You can argue the iPad was an incremental improvement on the iPhone.

So Apple is ready for their next disruption, we just have to realize we are already using it. When the next disruption comes out, you can bet it has many of the technologies in the current phones.