在苹果公司（Apple）的iPhone问题上，克雷•克里斯滕森这位颠覆性创新理论（disruption theory）之父曾犯下过十分著名的错误。五年前，他曾对一位前来采访的记者断言，iPhone获得成功的几率“极其有限”。

    上个月，拉里萨•麦克法夸尔在刊于《纽约客》（The New Yorker）上的一篇专稿中写道：“克里斯滕森是一位向来低调的学者，他把iPhone视作一部时髦的手机；后来他才认识到，这部手机对笔记本电脑同样也具有颠覆作用。”

    本周一，著名博客Daring Fireball的作者约翰•格鲁伯发表了一篇博文，庆祝五年前第一部iPhone正式面世。这篇文章的开头恰恰是克里斯滕森的这桩轶事。

    文中写道，在低估iPhone的阵营中，克里斯滕森绝非孤家寡人。

    曾几何时，iPod的大获成功让几乎所有人（包括本人在内）都误以为，苹果进军手机市场后的故事也会大同小异。既然iPod是全球最好的便携媒体播放器；那么，iPhone也完全有可能成为全世界最好的手机。

    但事实并非如此。它堪称世界上最好的便携电脑。所谓的最好，不是说它最强劲，速度最快，或者说效率最高。实际上它连“复制粘贴”这样的功能都不具备。之所以说它是最好的，是因为它总是不离左右，随时待命，任何时候只需按下一个键就能开启。而它带来的颠覆性变革，不是说让大家终于拥有了一部出色的手机，而是说，不管好坏，我们现在终于可以永远电脑不离手，互联网不离身了……

    过去五年的情况表明，与其说苹果公司颠覆了手机业，不如说它通过颠覆电脑业，“摧毁”了手机业。今天，手机已成为应用程序的化身，而不再是单纯的电子设备。而那些在iPhone诞生之前靠销售手机大获成功的公司现在不是销声匿迹，就是行将就木。

    最后，格鲁伯总结道，凡此种种，都是拜iPhone所赐。

    这是我所读到的最好的周年纪念文章。

    译者：清远

    Clay Christensen, the father of disruption theory, was famously wrong about Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, telling an interviewer five years ago that the probability of its success was "limited."

    "Being a low-end guy," Larissa MacFarquhar wrote in the New Yorker last month, "Christiansen saw it as a fancy cell phone; it was only later that he realized that it was also disruptive to laptops."

    Daring Fireball's John Gruber uses the Christensen incident as the starting point of an essay posted Monday to celebrate the release of the first iPhone five years ago.

    Christensen was not the only one, he writes, who underestimated the iPhone:

    The iPod's success fooled almost everyone (including me) into thinking that Apple's entry into the phone market would be similar. The iPod was the world's best portable media player; the "iPhone", thus, would likely be the world's best cell phone.

    But that's not what it was. It was the world's best portable computer. Best not in the sense of being the most powerful, or the fastest, or the most-efficient to use. The thing couldn't even do copy-and-paste. It was the best because it was always there, always on, always just a button-push away. The disruption was not that we now finally had a nice phone; it was that, for better or for worse, we would now never again be without a computer or the Internet...

    What's happened over the last five years shows not that Apple disrupted the phone handset industry, but rather that Apple destroyed the handset industry — by disrupting the computer industry. Today, cell phones are apps, not devices. The companies that were the most successful at selling cell phones pre-iPhone are now dead or dying.

    All this, Gruber concludes, because of the iPhone.

    It's the best anniversary piece I've read.