I'm writing this from a Mac when I ask this. Has Apple actually created anything that could arguably have changed the world? Resistant crops, the Cray, mobile refrigeration all changed the world. My iPhone's nice, but it's not exactly on the same level. Is there anything from Apple that I'm missing?
The iPhone absolutely changed the world. I agree - it is not on the level of the green revolution or refrigeration. It still led to one of the largest paradigm shifts in end user computing, taking it from the desk or table at work or home into the hand, everywhere, for everyone.
The iPhone changed the world through sheer scale. This even trickled back upstream to its components.
For example, VECSEL lasers were added to the iPhone in 2017 to power FaceID. At the time, they were a low volume, high cost component (used primarily in fiber transceivers) with generally poor yields.
Today, thanks in large part to the sheer number demanded by iPhones, they are a cheap, near commodity component with >90% yields.
I'm honestly still trying to wrap my head around in what way exactly the iPhone was innovative. It wasn't the first phone that could run programs, nor the first phone that could use the Internet (the "i" in "iPhone"). Perhaps it was the first phone that did both of those and also had a touchscreen, however that seems like an odd thing that would "take end-user computing from the desk to the hand, everywhere". I would argue the iPhone itself is not the innovation, but rather the ecosystem around it: the app store. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone else was doing that in 2006.
The major innovation of the original iPhone was its ability to be both $800 (no carrier subsidies) and be an iconic sought after product that didn’t have much function outside of what was already available in the phone market.
