Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the world its first look at the iPhone, as well as a glimpse into a radically different future of personal computing and communications, on this day in history, January 1. 9, 2007.
“It’s not just the best-selling device ever made: it’s probably the most influential, too,” Wired wrote in a 2018 retrospective of the first decade of the game. the Iphone.
“Its influence goes far beyond other phones: the infrastructure that made the iPhone also enabled drones, smart home devices, wearables, and self-driving cars.”
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The iPhone offered a fingertip touch screen, a powerful camera, and easy Internet access, among many other features, which were great advances over existing smartphones such as the Blackberry, Moto Q, and Palm Treo.
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs boasted, dressed in his signature black turtleneck, at Macworld Expo. in San Francisco.
Then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up the iPhone in San Francisco, California on January 2, 2019. 9, 2007.
(REUTERS/Kimberly White)
The Apple co-founder noted that the Macintosh in 1984 “changed everything.” computer industryand that the iPod (introduced on the same January 9 as the iPhone, but in 2001) “changed the entire music industry.”
He added: “Today we are introducing three revolutionary products.”
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” —Steve Jobs
Apple’s new offerings included “a widescreen iPod with touch controls” and an “innovative communication device.”
However, Macworld’s audience erupted when he mentioned that among the three new products was “a revolutionary mobile phone.”
Apple had yet to break into the burgeoning smartphone market at the time. So tech enthusiasts were eagerly awaiting the dramatic entry into the segment of the long-rumored pioneering computer giant.
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Jobs, who died in October 2011 after a long battle against cancerdelivered in the drama.
“These are not three separate devices,” he warned. “These are a device. And we call it iPhone.”
“The first-generation iPhone was, in many days, quite different from the ones we see in use today. For one thing, it was small, just 4.5 inches by 2.4 inches. By comparison, the iPhone XS Max launched in 2018 it’s 6.2 in. by 3.05 in,” Steven Silver wrote for Apple Insider in 2018.
The latest model, the iPhone 14, comes with a 6.7-inch version.
Surrounded by cheering Apple Store employees, an early iPhone buyer leaves the store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on June 29, 2007.
(REUTERS/Jeff Zelevansky)
Silver added that the first iPhone “also had no third-party apps and had a maximum of 16GB of flash memory. The first iPhone was exclusive to AT&T and worked only on AT&T’s notoriously slow and unreliable EDGE GSM network.”
Still, the author and other experts noted: “That first iPhone was very important.”
It was also very popular.
“Sales of iPhones accounted for 52% of Apple’s $365 billion in sales in 2021.”
Apple sold 6.1 million first-generation iPhones between the time it released the product to the public on June 29, 2007, and discontinued it on July 15, 2008.
Greg Packer, then 59, a former highway maintenance worker from Long Island, is credited with being the first person to buy an iPhone on June 29 at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan after he reportedly camped out. all week.
A general view of the audience during the Avril Lavigne concert with smartphones at Espaco Unimed on September 20, 2019. 7, 2022, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
(Mauricio Santana/Getty Images)
About 2 billion iPhones have been sold since its introduction, with nearly 800 million in use worldwide today, roughly one for every 10 people on the planet, according to estimates by various technology analysts.
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The iPhone and the technological advances it brought to other smartphones have had a profound impact on the way people live.
“Millions of people use an iPhone as their only computer,” Wired notes. “And its only camera, GPS device, music player, communicator, trip planner, sex finder, and payment tool. It put the world in our pockets.”
“Has it become a poor substitute for ‘real’ relationships?”
It also spawned a whole new industry of app developers, accessory makers, and social media giants.
The iPhone also had an immediate and profound impact on Apple’s bottom line.
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“Just under 40% of Apple’s revenue can now be attributed to the iPhone,” CNET reported in October 2008.
iPhone sales accounted for 52% of Apple’s $365 billion in sales in 2021, according to company reports.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the new iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco on Tuesday, January 1. 9, 2007.
(John Green, MediaNews Group/Bay Area News via Getty Images)
The impact of the iPhone on our lives has been profound.
The way humans attend concerts and sporting events, follow directions, and record their daily lives has changed with the advent of the iPhone.
But whether the iPhone is a net benefit to society remains to be seen, some experts argue.
“In 2007, when the iPhone debuted, people greeted it with enthusiasm, says sociologist Judy Wajcman,” author Heidi Hackford wrote for the Computer History Museum in 2018.
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“It was seen, like mobile phones before it, as another useful way to sync up with family, friends and community. But has that line between work time and personal time been further eroded because of the device? And has it become a poor substitute for ‘real’ relationships?
The author also noted, “As with any new technology, reviews are mixed.”
