John Gruber linked to this YouTube video of Steve Jobs introducing Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy at Macworld in 2001. I remember watching this way back when, and it was great to revisit it. What struck me while re-watching this, though, was this slide (apologies for the poor quality, I grabbed this from the YouTube video):

Steve Jobs on stage at Macworld, in 2001

Here, Steve is illustrating all of the devices that can be connected to the Mac, in order to achieve a greater whole. But when I went over each device — portable CD player, portable MP3 player, PDA, video camera, and digital camera, G4 Macintosh, it struck me — a mere 8 years later, Apple has replaced all of those devices with this:

iPhone 3GS (photo: Apple Inc.)

Seriously, that's crazy. The iPhone 3GS can take pictures, shoot video, allow you to listen to music & watch video, and handle all of the functions of a PDA. In many cases, the iPhone can handle many of the functions of a computer -- you can edit photos and video, upload to the web, create mixes — many of the tasks that required a Macintosh (and the Digital Hub strategy) back in 2001.

Sometimes, it's good to look back, to see how much progress has been made in such a short period of time.

-Andy.