I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Apple recently launched quite a good mobile telephone which has caused something of a stir in the media. After finally getting my hands on a unit that I could actually live with, rub porridge in, and lose down the back of the sofa in real-world conditions, I was predictably impressed, but in surprising ways. The first surprise is how well iTunes TV content works on the iPhone. It is dangerously easy to score good television content from the iTunes store, now that the European store is finally beginning to catch up with the US version in terms of the range of stuff on offer: The Mighty Boosh, The West Wing, Spaced – these are all considerable diversions that delightfully enliven a dull commute. Of course, you can purchase DVD boxed sets of these fine products and then rip the DVDs and watch them on a range of mobile devices, but the ease of use and horribly instantaneous gratification of the online Apple store is pretty hard to beat.

The screen is very handsome and the experience of sneaking in some great telly while strap-hanging on the Northern Line is pleasantly indulgent – so beware unless you fancy another digital distraction in your life. The shows are of course over priced, which is par for the course with Apple: as numerous vociferous complainants in the comments section of the relevant shows on the Apple store point out, you are paying an arm and a leg in comparison to the cost of the programmes on DVD. However, convenience is a valuable premium, and I’m just too lazy to be bothered with ripping DVD box sets if I want to take that video on the road. I suspect others will be too.

However, the shocking surprise is the web browser. The iPhone’s browser allows you magically to expand and shrink the pages you’re looking at with that funky iPhone touch interface. This is a really big deal. You can do this on photos of course, but no one, except Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, really needs to zoom in on photo details that often, although it’s a fun gimmick to demo to mates. You need to do it on web pages all the time when you’re peering at a small screen, and it’s brilliantly effective.

It’s as though you’re sitting at your computer enjoying a full-fat web experience, rather than the unpleasant web lite experience I get using, say, Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile on my HTC handheld, which feels like trying to read a newspaper held up ten feet away whilst staring through a letterbox. On the iPhone you can get up close and personal, examining images, buttons and widgets much more intimately. The ability to resize what you’re looking at means, for example, that when connecting to our office wi-fi network I can zoom in on the “Yes, I accept these terms and conditions” button and click on it with no hassle. It’s a game-changer for the mobile web.

You can browse sites like Amazon.com and buy a product relatively painlessly for the same reason: you’re experiencing the same site as you do at your desktop. I also had a pretty good time reading long-form text on the browser: you can flick over to the landscape orientation, pop over to Project Gutenberg, and you suddenly have a very good electronic book in your hand. And bear in mind this is before we’ve seen what the iPhone will be like on a 3G network. I didn’t find the current network speeds a problem at all.

A colleague at CNET.co.uk who has been living with the iPhone much longer than I have has had very similar experiences, and has found himself whipping out his iPhone to resolve important trivia questions with unnerving frequency. If you have a browser locked and loaded and ready to go in your hand you use it as a kind of small portable iBrain, supporting your arguments, checking your facts, establishing the name of the fifth Beatle, confirming the start time of the film you’re going to see. It’s just part of your personal performance, like looking at your watch or using your Oyster card: personal, ubiquitous, unremarkable. It just works.

I’ve been watching the machinations of the carriers and the phone companies in their pursuit of mobile data services for what seems like decades now, and the whole thing is a complete sideshow. There’s a big, fat elephant in the corner and it’s called the internet. That’s what I want: that’s what all consumers want. You will never beat the web, and to try to beat the web with a network that offers a greater variety of content and services is a tragic error. To offer a watered-down alternative is also to lose. Carriers keep trying to come up with data strategies that interpose themselves between the sunny uplands of the web, and they’re never going to work. Once hardware devices that provide a good enough web experience become popular, that’s where consumers will go. We’ve all seen the future of the mobile web; in fact you’re looking at it. We’re here. It’s this web browser on a handheld.

It must be a bitter pill for the handset manufacturers. They’re all preparing their own versions of iPhone-like devices, and they must either match what Apple has done or offer something less impressive – the lousy data wibble you get now from the carriers. Either way they’ve lost the initiative and have to play catch-up while an interloper in their industry sets the agenda.

There’s a pretty simple way to place a losing bet in the technology game. Try to build an alternative to the web, or try and pretend it’s not there. The brutal Darwinian politics of networking mean that the web, like the house, always wins. It’s always better, faster, and stronger. I think a good web experience is really the biggest weapon that Apple has smuggled into the carrier’s world via the iPhone – it’s a Trojan horse that brings the power of the web into their walled gardens. They don’t stand a chance. In five years you’ll have a great web browser on your phone and the web will have eaten the mobile data industry.

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Michael Parsons, now Editorial Director, Consumer Media, for CNET Networks UK, spent five years working in Silicon Valley and worrying about technology. He can be reached at michael.parsons@cnet.com

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