"Apple makes revolution accessible to everybody," says Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at New York's Museum of Modern Art, hailing the glossy black iPhone as yet another milestone in product design.
Like the iconic Apple products that preceded it, the glass-face iPhone, with its rounded-edge, slim silver frame and multi-touch display screen combining phone, iPod and Internet access, is likely to influence the design of more-mundane household appliances such as refrigerators and microwave ovens. "The interface on this phone is not only easy to use and have fun with, it's universally understandable," Antonelli says.
The candy-colored translucence of iMac computers, beginning with Bondi blue in 1998, set off a wave of color in irons, vacuum cleaners and sewing machines. Three years later, the clean lines and click-wheel control panel of the iPod started showing up in ovens and ranges.
Apple simply sets the bar higher for everybody, Antonelli says. "It's been decades since we have seen a company with such design power."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071100408.html?tid=informbox
