In 2007, Steve Jobs told MacWorld that Apple was launching “three revolutionary products” that would have the same impact as the Mac and the iPod. It was a “wide screen iPod with touch controls … a revolutionary new phone” and “a revolutionary Internet communicator”. Mr. Jobs’ joke, of course, was that these products were actually one – the iPhone.
Bigger, better, but still iPhone
On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone went on sale, which means he is now a teenager. It is larger and better than a 3.5 inch device unveiled that day by Mr. Jobs. Instead of running OS X, it now has iOS, and luckily you no longer need to sync it through iTunes. However, what struck me when looking at the original presentation was how many basic elements of the original remain.
The revolutionary multi-touch technology explained by Mr. Jobs at Macworld, although obviously improved, is still at the heart of what makes the iPhone great and easy to use. Likewise, a high-end camera and the ability to synchronize various media have always been his heart. So has the ability to watch it on a high-end screen. It’s never just a phone and this trend has only accelerated since.
Likewise, Apple is still tirelessly focusing on keeping the device slim, and although rival form factors, like the keyboards that Jobs laughed at during the presentation, have disappeared, the basic form of the iPhone actually stayed. Yes, the charging port has changed and the headphone jack has disappeared, but we still have the home button on the latest iPhone SE (not to mention the iPad). All the models of the device are always recognizable, reassuring, linked to the first that we have ever seen. It “always feels good in your hand”. All this can only confirm the robustness of the original design.
Remember the original launch
Some of the journalists who first covered the iPhone on sale thought about it. These include Walt Mossberg, whose product review with Katie Boehert was published in the Wall Street Journal two days before it went on sale.
The impact of the iPhone on society
Regardless of the impact it has had on Apple, the broader impact of the iPhone on society as it has evolved has also been profound. In 2008, Mr. Jobs commissioned engineers to make the device capable of recording video. As the current WSJ columnist Joanna Stern recently wrote:
About 10 years and 10 iPhone models later, Darnella Frazier, 17, found herself standing on a sidewalk in Minneapolis, swiping on her purple iPhone 11 lock screen to launch the video camera as quickly as possible . She hit the red circle and for the next 10 minutes and 9 seconds, she held her phone as steady as possible, capturing George Floyd, a black man crying for his mother as his face was smashed on the sidewalk by the white cop Derek Chauvin. “I opened my phone and started recording because I knew that if I didn’t, no one would believe me,” said Frazier in a statement provided by her lawyer, Seth Cobin. A day later, on May 26, she opened the Facebook application and used Mr. Floyd’s video to download it. The world now knows its name.
Like so many others, the iPhone has changed the way I work, travel and communicate. In this period of quarantine, isolation and social distancing, it is at the heart of how we all stay in touch with our friends and family. I can’t wait to see what the iPhone teens look like. This one is for sure, everything will be built on what Steve Jobs announced that day in 2007.
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