This seems to be the week for contributed columns from my readers. (Please, continue, it is fun to be an editor, and I guess I am following the larger trend of taking user-generated content.) Here we hear from Bob Matsuoka, who runs his own Web software firm in New York City and a long-time friend. (He can be reached at bob@matsuoka.com). Take it away, Bob. 

Since getting the iPhone, I have become hooked, and realize that this little baby is changing the game of computing, as the IBM PC did back in the early 1980s, as Lotus 1-2-3 and Adobe Photoshop and the iPod did later on. And it isn’t because it has an astounding Web browser and built-in Wifi, or a simple and elegant interface, or because it marries a cell phone and an MP3 player. It is because of the built-in Clock application. 

It seems strange to start off talking about the iPhone being a $500 alarm clock, but bear with me. Every smartphone I’ve used in the past few years has had a clock/alarm/timer-type application.  How hard can it be to write a good one?  Yet I’ve never, ever, been happier than I have been with the iPhone’s Clock, and until now, none of the others have stayed with me. I have used many PDAs, including the latest Blackberry 8830, which is a very nice phone, and the latest Treos, which aren’t. Their equivalent applications are just awful. And while Strom loves his Razr for being a great phone, it has an impossible alarm clock/timer function that makes me want to tear out what little hair I have left.  

The iPhone’s clock application is so beautiful, it makes me _want_ to set alarms for alternate side parking.  I _want_ to use it for timing my ramen noodles. Here’s the ultimate test of your timer app – after pouring hot water into your noodles, get to your phone and set the timer in less than the minute or two you have before the timer is moot.  It was easy that I could do it from the first time I used it.

What is true about Clock is true about the other iPhone applications.  I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to find out how to set a custom ringtone on the 8830.  And I’m usually a fairly quick study at these things.

And that’s my point.  The iPhone is not a phone, its the first generation of a new type of computing device.  One that will change how we view computing.  One that will make our lives simpler.  We won’t have to learn how to use applications, we’ll just use them.  We won’t worry about launching applications, saving files, quitting — just using.  Every other smartphone is still based on an archaic, cumbersome, paradigm taken straight from desktop computers. Drop-down/pop-up menus, programs, files — ugh.  Look how bad Windows Mobile is, and most of us are used to the real Windows on our desktops. Why should a phone take minutes to just turn on? The alternatives are not much better.  Mobile OSX, what runs inside the iPhone however, is a whole new beast.  Intuitive, responsive, and an extension of the beautiful hardware that it runs on. 

It’s a given to me that one day Apple will open up their API officially.  As others have pointed out, the iPhone is currently in a “benign closed” state, which allows developers to create and distribute applications, but does not require Apple’s support or backwards compatibility (note that I’m not talking about the unlocking-type applications, which are quite another story).  And its remarkable to what extent the developer community has taken off.  App Installer, the de facto distribution platform for unofficial iPhone apps, now boasts several dozen installable packages, and more appear daily, it seems. Soon there will be more iPhone apps than Windows Mobile ones.

I’m already impressed at how sophisticated these early third party applications are.  Installation and updates are dead simple, and the UIs generally are as easy to use as the ones that come with the phone.  Which shows me how powerful the iPhone API is.  No other phone or computer I’ve ever used has managed to provide this integrated an interface, and we’re still only in the early stages.

It’s a testament to Apple that most of the apps on using are the built-in ones, but here are some I’m enjoying: – ApolloIM: multiprotocol IM client;– Summerboard: let’s you customize “springboard”, the iPhone’s program launcher with new icons, wallpaper, and such;– App Installer: a must-have. Makes app installation dead simple;– rSBT: rearrange your Spring/summerboard apps;– Navizon cell/wifi locator– iFlickr: post to flickr from iPhone camera

Yes, there are lots that will require improvement.  While I’m already quite happy with iPhone typing, and at least as fast as I am thumbing on a Treo or a Blackberry, copy and paste are missing and cursor movement are still rudimentary (for example).  But the potential of the beautiful multi-touch screen is enormous. And the fact is, while other people complain about how the iPhone is married to AT&T and has other exclusive carrier deals abroad, it finally puts the device front and center, rather than something that the carriers “give away” or spiff their resellers as a come-on for a two-year contract.

We have the iPhone and iPod Touch, we’ll have a tablet-sized iMac Touch soon enough, and who know.s, I may be typing at my desktop on a virtual surface one of these days (I never thought it would happen, but I’m changing my mind).

The significance of the iPhone is not that it is the best phone/smartphone.  It isn’t.  It is, however, the first of its kind, an elegant if flawed harbinger of a new era — just like its ancestor, the first Mac.  The rest of the world is still running the equivalent of DOS.  When you use the iPhone, you are using the future of portable, personal computing.