Newsweek recently examined whether the episodes of Seinfeld still hold up 10 years later. After I got over the shock that "yikes, that was 10 years ago? I am friggin' old," I thought it was a nice article -- everyone loves Seinfeld, it's fun to look back, yadda yadda yadda. But Mac|Life dares to ask the deeper, more important, and far, far geekier question:

Would the episodes of Seinfeld hold up if the characters had access to iPhones?

Well, do they? To borrow a phrase from closer to the show's time, I think they do. Not.

Heh. Look, I'm not bagging on the best sitcom of all time (and I thought Newsweek's "Legend or Loser?" headline was a little much -- there are a few stops in between, aren't there?), but very little from 10 years ago could hope to hold a candle to such a technological wonder. They didn't even have iPods back then. Bondi Blue iMacs, dude, and that was the same year the show ended. Seinfeld is still awesome.

Anyway, let's take a look at a few classic episodes to see how the plots wind up after they've been trampled upon by the iPhone 3G's unique footprint. 

The Chinese Restaurant (206)

The entire premise of this classic episode is that Jerry, Elaine, and George are waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, on their way to see a bad movie (Plan 9 from Outer Space, actually a real movie, as opposed to many fake ones mentioned in later episodes, directed by Ed Wood). This is a notable case study in that nearly everything that happened within the 22-minute story would likely have not occurred if the characters owned iPhones.

First of all, the restaurant. They might not have even picked that hole if they'd been using the iPhone to look up the movie theater's location in Google Maps. Then any number of apps -- Where, iWant, UrbanSpoon -- could help them find a better place to eat.

And of course, we saw George freak out ("You know we're LIVING! In a SOCIETY!") when he had trouble using the pay phone to call Cynthia. Later, Cynthia actually tried to call George back at the restaurant (who does that anymore?), and the host called "Cartwright" instead of "Costanza," ensuring hilarity would ensue. Of course, an iPhone-toting George makes his call without problems, at the same time Elaine and Jerry use Yelp to complain about the restaurant's incredibly slow service and seating the other guy ahead of them.

Even the part where Jerry and George offer to pay Elaine $50 to eat an egg roll off someone's else's table could have been drastically changed with iPhones. George would have been snapping pictures of her embarrassment, and if she had actually pulled off the stunt, she could collect from Jerry even if he didn't have cash, thanks to a little thing called PayPal.

Then, of course, there's The Pez Dispenser...