Welcome! And thanks for telling me what /. is!
Please point me to the phone that had as tight integration, as good a web browsing experience, as populous and non-fragmented an app market, and as nice and intuitive an interface as the iPhone 1 at exactly the same time as when it came out?
Apple took disparate components and repackaged them in a way that built a market. If there was one there before, its amazing how quickly they owned it through commercials alone. Definitely not through quality of a product!
I'm far from an Apple apologist, I've owned one iPod and that's about it. (Check my posting history, I have one!) Form guides function, and vice versa, and to not recognize that fact is basically to bury your head in the sand. But give credit where credit is due - you're stretching to actually say that iPhone had 0 impact on the market, and 0 impact on how things are done.
That's complete bullshit, and that's really sad if you think that's what /. is about.