On Wednesday, Apple is going to announce the iPhone 7, and I'm going to spend the day on Twitter skewering them and their terrible marketing as they so richly deserve. But before this time of great frivolity, it is perhaps worth remembering and examining why the iPhone matters quite a bit. And will continue to matter for the foreseeable future.

I have always had a complex relationship with Apple. Like Microsoft in the late 1990s to early 2000s, Apple today is in fact a terrible company, and it's hard to reconcile the hubris and unilateral thinking with the brilliance the hardware designs they make, if less frequently these days. (Apple's software and services are mostly terrible and always have been.)