The Meaning of the iPhone It's sold out at every AT&T store. With a few caveats, purchasers seem to love it. What they don't love is AT&T; there are lots of reports of people having trouble transferring their phone numbers, of AT&T's servers being overloaded, of clueless AT&T tech help.

Sigh. Does Apple have to do everything?

A thought on Apple enthusiasm. The mainstream media wrote quite a bit about people lining up for iPhones, and all the writing was bad. The tone of articles about the wait-in-liners was consistently, Can you believe these crazy people with no life? Getting in line for a phone? Clearly they are dupes of Apple. They fell for the hype.

Here is a rule of journalism from the book that I will someday write: Nothing is interesting to a reader if the writer himself doesn't take it seriously. If the articles mock or tease the subject, then it's really not an article about the subject at all, but about the reporter and his or her own preconceived notions of what is appropriate behavior. And when that happens, something more interesting is generally missed.

I didn't wait in line for an iPhone, but I understand why people did. The iPhone isn't simply a phone, of course. It's an avatar for people's frustration over years of bad design—of their irritation with buggy Windows, of crummy cell phone service, of ghastly cell phone design, of lousy American cars, of (most) digital cameras, of record companies that gouged consumers for every possible penny until they drove an entire industry into bankruptcy, of abominable AOL service becoming horrible Time-Warner cable. Enthusiasm for the iPhone is really a statement about the way we'd like to see technology and business work: brilliantly-designed, user-friendly, elegant, fun.

Or, as A.O. Scott said yesterday in his review of Ratatouille, "its sensibility...is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals." The iPhone is a testament to the idea that American companies can still make sophisticated products that work, and work beautifully.

And the truth is, there aren't many instances of such technology in the consumer marketplace. The iPod, of course, is first. The Mac operating system. Then Tivo. I can't think of anything else. (Wii, maybe? YouTube? The old Napster? HBO? Pixar?) But not HDTVs, not every other cell phone, not kitchen appliances, not much. (Imagine how great an Apple-made flat screen TV would be.)

The problem of user-hostile technology is particularly concentrated in the cell phone industry. I've long been amazed at how ugly most cell phones are. (How hard can it be?) Nor have I ever owned or seen a phone which had a logical, intuitive operating system. (Partly because some phone operating systems are designed by Microsoft.) And of course we've all experienced problems with reception, billing, long lines in cell phone shops, hidden fees, and so on. If there was an industry ripe for Apple, it was this one. People who waited in line for iPhones understood that intuitively. Their passion is not just a statement of support for the iPhone; it's an indictment of the industry before Apple.

People who have used Macs for a long time know this; they are not Mac addicts because the company brainwashes them, but because they share Apple's vision of products that work easily and elegantly. They are not manipulated by Apple, they are empowered by it.

In this way, Apple's products are a metaphor for the way that we would like society to work; if, say, the White House functioned as well as an iPod, we'd be in considerably better shape than we are. Some states, for example, have touch-screen voting machines that don't work. The iPhone has a touch screen that works beautifully.

It's no coincidence that Apple's classic "1984" ad has reappeared this year, transformed into an explicitly political spot. At the very least, Apple represents liberation from bad, oppressive design—spyware, for example—and in a society where we all depend on technology constantly, this is no small thing. At its most expansive, Apple represents a vision of a functioning polity.

(Similarly, you can argue that Google has betrayed this philosophy, but it's no coincidence that the company, which also has empowering technology, has the slogan, "Don't Be Evil.")

The true brainwashed, I would suggest, are the people who haven't been able to use Macs for one reason or another. They have used inferior technology for so long, they think that crashes, glitzes, freezes and breakdowns are just the way things have to be.

Over the past few years, as Macs have grown more popular, I've given lessons to a number of people switching from Windows computers. One thing I'm always struck by is their refusal to accept how easy Macs are to use. They are so accustomed to user-hostile design, they have trouble with simplicity. They want things to be more complicated.

(This is why, if you give children a choice between a Mac and a Windows machine, they will always choose a Mac. They have not been brainwashed; they have, in this sense, free will.)

It's as if you kept an animal in a cage for years and years...and then you open the door and encourage it to go free. But, scared and wary, the animal sniffs around the edges and hesitates to leave. Whether animals or humans, creatures that have lived under tyranny don't always know how to handle freedom. They take some time to get used to it. And some people will never get it.

Let me be the first to say that Apple isn't perfect and sometimes contradicts this philosophy: As Times columnist Joe Nocera points out, the iPhone battery is an issue, and Apple's handling of it isn't exactly straightforward.

But Apple is generally held to higher standards than are other companies in such matters, and that's a good thing. Its advocates expect more from Apple, and when the company falls down, the loudest cries of dissent come from the "Mac faithful," as we are known. That is why, for example, Apple switched its stance of having the iPhone be a closed system and began allowing outsiders to design programs for it. There's a back and forth between Apple and its consumers that is healthy and, well, democratic.

I would even suggest that part of the excitement of the iPhone is that it is not a Blackberry, which has become a symbol of the greed and materialism of the Wall Street class. And the manners of the people who use the Blackberry—typing away during conversations, ignoring restrictions on using it during flight, conspicuously leaving it on the table during meals —have become a symbol of their disdain for people who are less important (generally, less wealthy). If Wall Street types really don't take to the iPhone because of its touch keyboard, then that schism will become even more apparent.

I know—this kind of theory sounds farfetched, it's impossible to prove, newspaper reporters aren't going to write this kind of thing, and people waiting in line to buy a new phone aren't likely to say it.

But before you write off all those folks standing outside Apple stores as stupid or brainwashed or slacker-esque, think deeper—think different. Maybe there's a philosophy behind their madness. Maybe there's something exciting and encouraging and optimistic at work. God knows, this country needs something to work well. Its White House doesn't, its war doesn't, its social justice doesn't; people are losing confidence in the future.

The iPhone won't save the world, but it will certainly change it for the better. It manifests the optimistic promise of technology—the optimistic reality of technology—and in that sense, at a time of dismay and decline, it gives us something to believe in. When you think of it that way, maybe $500 or $600 is a small price to pay.  ¶ 7:02 AM