I disagree. Touch screen has been "in the wild" for quite some time in various forms. Pre-iPhone the most used one was the stylus approach. And it was awful.

I disagree. Touch screen has been "in the wild" for quite some time in various forms. Pre-iPhone the most used one was the stylus approach. And it was awful. All the different things that come together in the iPhone made people see this as finally being the right path to moving the computer from the desktop into the hand. It might have happened without them, but judging on how all previous attempts turned out I wouldn't be surprised if they saved us decades.