By Chris Clark, 09/12/2013, in Everything else
I probably found this more profound than it really is, but Matt Buchanan said it well in the New Yorker, regarding the latest iPhone announcements:
Fundamental technology, like manufacturing processes for processors and imaging sensors and displays, have evolved to the point that the basic shape and sense of a phone—a thin rectangle with a four-to-five-inch high-resolution touch screen stuffed with a variety of sensors—is determined now largely based on its merits rather than its outright technical limitations, much the same way that the basic shape of a knife is defined by its function rather than our ability to produce it.
It's amazing to think that this is true; that the technological achievements of these devices are perhaps being held back more by the size and shape of our hands than by our manufacturing capabilities.