There is a really interesting interview with Marc Andressen on the web.  There were two things in the interview which I struggled with.  First he predicts the death of the print industry in favour of the Internet delivery and the other one was his glowing description of the iPhone. 

Whilst I'd love it to come true I find it hard to believe that the print industry should close their presses and put all their effort into perfecting Internet delivery.  But this certainly has made me think.  What will it be like in 10 years time?  I do think that devices which emulate the ease of reading on paper will be more prevalent (in fact the phone will will be that device).  So in that sense a dramatic change for all forms of publishers (from brands down to bloggers) is about to happen, but I was shocked by the statement that the New York Times should close its presses now.

The other part of the interview which made me think was his description of the iPhone.  He described it as the first phone to have a full operating system and said it had been beamed in from 5 years in the future.  He mentioned RIM and Windows Mobile as other smart phones but did not mention Nokia or S60.  Why?  I find it quite frustrating that the American view of phones is so different from the rest of the world.  Why is Symbian not viewed as a full operating system?  He also described the developers eco-system round the iPhone as being a first too.  I have a mixed feeling on this.  Firstly, he seems to have ignored the fact that Symbian is as a full OS as the Unix on the iPhone.  He ignored that its been possible to develop fully fledged applications for years on S60 and then sell them (allbeit through 3rd parties).  However, Apple do currently seem to have a more complete end to end developer eco system which Nokia is now addressing with Ovi Publish.  It is a shame that the US view of the world seems to have ignored the achievements of Europeans, but I guess we have to keep trying to get everything right.

Perhaps it will be Europe which gets the solutions to the print industry moving from paper to the Internet right.