5. The Cell Phone as More Than a Phone

In addition to making shareware trendy, the App Store did something much more important: It turned the cell phone into a computing platform.

Suddenly, cell phones could do just about anything, even if that usually equates to playing games. As Apple advertised, if you can find a task, there's likely "an app for that."

Again, this wasn't entirely new. Significant amounts of money and time had been invested in making it possible to run Java applications on phones for years. However, Apple shifted the focus in a way only it can.

Suddenly, people used their phones as GPS devices in their cars. They browsed the Web on them. They tweeted, blogged, and "Facebooked." They listened to music, played games, watched movies, and viewed photographs.