Posted on 06/29/2017 12:16:50 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Ten years ago today Apple shipped a wide-screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet device. But it wasn't three products. It was one product. And we got it, Steve. We got iPhone.
On June 28, 2007, Apple shipped the original iPhone. People had been waiting outside for days in lineups that ran for blocks. Anticipation was off the charts. Competitors were nervously dismissing it as a over-reaching and over-priced. Media was calling it the Jesus Phone.
Steve Jobs had put sneaker to stage only six months earlier to introduce it. The most incredible keynote presentations of his life—a life filled with incredible keynote presentations—and in the history of consumer electronics, he'd taken a moment before he started to assemble the team and tell them to remember the moment: The moment before iPhone. Because, in the next moment, everything would change.
(Excerpt) Read more at imore.com ...
For some of us, we had smartphones for 6 years by that time, granted with a lot less of the Steve Jobs Reality distortion field style of marketing.
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Changed your world maybe. I don’t worship phones or their makers.
MFT,T! (my first thought, too)
Still using a variation of the classic flip phone and never felt the need for more than that. Of course, I do not Twit, facefarque, browse or graze, either.
Woz dating a Friend of mine when Iphone came out.
I laughed my ass off when he pulled probabky 10 different phones out of his pockets and car, then explained the advantages and drawbacks of each, including the Iphone.
I made the case for my phone at the time and he tells me, for my use, it probably is the right phone.
He then proceeded to gift my friend with IPhone’s and her kids.
To this day they are Apple fans.
I still use Samsung.
You are correct.
I, personally, had a HTC Touch at the time - the worlds first touch screen smart phone.
It could cut, copy and paste something that took the iPhone several years to achieve.
Apps were $10.00 though...
Those "smartphones" did not have anywhere near the capabilities that the iPhone engendered. They had only the ability to show a crippled internet, not a full webpage, touch capability was single sense and done by use of a stylus, screens were low resolution, and memory capacity was extremely limited, usually under 1GB or even smaller. Apple complete redefined the smartphone with the iPhone.
There was a complete demarkation in the design of cellular phones that is essentially those that were designed before the iPhone and those designed after the iPhone. Apple invented the modern multitouch interface for small devices. Apple holds those patents. They hold the patents on the gestures and license the to all the other smartphone makers. You can claim what you want to, but you are wrong to say that Apple did not define the modern smartphone category.
The first Android phone design was essentially going to be a rip-off of the Blackberry design:
The first touch screen Android phones all had physical keyboards and came out almost a year and a half or more after the iPhone (First Android phone available was the T-Mobile G1 in September of 2008 and had only 256MB of Storage, relying on slow SD cards for further storage that could only store photos, the next Android phone was not available until July of 2009). When Android phones finally dropped their physical keyboards, they were plagued with latency problems in their virtual keyboard solutions due to their history of having to translate the screen inputs into physical keystrokes as though the still had a keyboard.
Other OS smartphones, such as Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM stuck with physical keyboards even longer, and still kept low capacity storage, and were essentially limited function feature phones. Some had more capabilities but were far from easy to use. The RIM Blackberry phones came with a user manual that was over 200 pages of complicated instructions on its use. Even the Motorola Razr had an extensive and complex instruction manual.
Apple was the first to really put a fully functional computer in a small package and add a phone to it. . . and made it easy to use.
There’s a new book I just bought called “The One Device - The Secret History of the iPhone”. Thought I’d get your opinion on the book if you have read it. I’m through the first few chapters and it seems good so far.
I don't "worship phones or their makers," Jim. . . but I do recognize the social change, both good and bad, that resulted from the introduction of the pocket computer that Steve Jobs introduced ten years ago today. I wonder how many Freepers read and post on FR from mobile devices?
I know that having one of these small computers with me did indeed make me more available for my clients and thus more productive, and thereby increased my ability to earn money for my family.
I’ve stuck with Blackberry all this time and still love it. The Blackberry Passport with the BB 10 OS is a work of art. The new BlackBerry KeyONE (Android) is fantastic as well. I have a work provided iPhone and simply took the SIM card out and put it in my KeyONE. My iphone is at my bedside to listen to podcasts at night only. Typing on glass is not for me, lol, but with my BBs I can do both.
In fact, it caused such a revolution that it even affected the Wrigley Company. Why? Because while people in supermarket checkout lines in the past would be tempted to buy chewing gum in the checkout display, today those same people waiting in line now using their touchscreen phones instead, which has hurt sales of any item on the checkout line.
The pioneers of products aren’t the ones who win in the long run.
It’s the Johnny-come-latelies who adapt the product for idiots that make out like bandits.
Idiots are great customers. Fanatically loyal.
As I remember it the HTC Touch came out just a couple of weeks before the iPhone. Some functions could be done by touch, but others required a stylus.
Yes.
That's a fantastic true narrative you wrote about the sea change in mobile phones when the iPhone was revealed to the world, will refer to it often for others. Your last sentence is particularly true; Steve Jobs was working on the iPad long before the iPhone, the iPad being a multi-touch computer in a small package, he and Apple then added the phone feature and miniaturized the whole and announced the iPhone first. And it indeed changed the world.
I resemble that remark . . .
I guess I’m an idiot then...
My company is front to back Macs. We pay zero for IT support. I used to BE the IT support for companies that had Windows computers. When it came time to own my own company, I decided I wanted to be productive and not mess with computers, so I looked at Macs. We now incorporate iPads, iPhones, Mac Mini’s, Mac Pro’s, iMacs, and Macbook Pro’s and are highly productive with NO additional costs after purchase.
Damn, I’m really stupid! Thanks for telling this Microsoft Certified Network Administrator the truth!
Good post, interesting history stuff.
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