What does the rest of the world think about Apple’s announcements yesterday? Let’s see now…

Jason Kottke made a quick mock-up to see how the iPhone compared with other devices in terms of size and “holdability”. Pretty well, it seems.

The Age in Australia compares the co-inciding keynotes from Apple and Dell, remarking that while the Apple event was overflowing with people, the hall for the Dell speech was barely half-full. What’s more:

One person in the audience, Mark Parisi, said he liked seeing the products Dell introduced but he also was eager to leave the hall to get to some Internet access to find out what Apple had announced.

The iPhone is a threat to manufacturers of high-end phone handsets, reported Reuters. It quoted one analyst saying:

This (iPhone) does have the potential to shake up the competitive landscape even if it’s not a device that’s targeted to mass consumers. It’s clearly targeted towards the highest-value subscribers and they are the most profitable subscribers.

Engadget soberly reminds us that, technically speaking, iPhone is not a smartphone:

i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed

Jack Schofield at The Guardian points to a Time.com article which claims that the iPhone started life as a tablet project:

Jobs, being Jobs, figured he could do better, so he had Apple engineers noodle around with a tablet PC. When they showed him the touchscreen they came up with, he got excited. So excited he forgot all about tablet computers.

A lucky handful of people have even tried playing with the iPhone. Gizmodo got 15 minutes:

It’s easy to say how it worked — it did just the way it’s supposed to, per the Keynote. The experience is very OS X like.

And David Pogue got a whole hour:

It feels amazing in your hand. Not like an iPod, not like a Treo — but something new. It’s so thin, and the rounded stainless-steel edges are so smooth, you can excuse its larger-than-Treo façade. When you’re on a call, it’s so cool how the screen turns off to save power, thanks to its proximity sensor.

Of all the comments from all over the web, Steven Frank summed up the atmosphere in the Moscone Center with his incisive reportage:

AAAAAHHH AAAAHHH AAAAAHHH AAAAHHH AAAHHBB GGG LL AAAAA

Hit the nail on the head there, Steven.