Apple's first iPhone was also the first to realize the potential of the smartphone
The iPhone was the phone I'd wanted all along. I had been trying to use cell phones as if they were iPhones for years, but nothing really stuck.
On January 9, 2007, I was at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I was working for a company that made TV tuners for Mac, and we sold in Apple stores across the U.S.
I was setting up the booth at Macworld 2007 while the keynote was going on, and missed out on the big iPhone announcement. Everyone else in the company was at the presentation and came back more excited than I'd ever seen them. At the Apple stage, there were employees taking questions about iPhone with the model displayed in its glass cylinder.
AppleTV was also introduced at the event, and they had tables upon tables of AppleTV and televisions connected so that we could experience Apple's first move into home entertainment. Katie Cotton was on site and handling press requests, which were coming like a barrage. Macworld became overwhelmed overnight with everyone who got on a flight from Las Vegas leaving CES to come see the phone that would change every phone after it.
Years before, I had a Sony Ericsson T616, which I bought because it was on the list of phones that Apple showed as working with iSync. I modified it with OS X sounds and animations (the progress wheel, the 2003 Apple logo, the Jaguar wallpaper) all to make it feel more Apple-like. Having contact and photos sync was powerful. At that time, people were used to having to edit contacts in the phone. Being able to write the contacts at the Mac and sync them across was powerful.
Then I got a few Nokia s60 Symbian-based phones. These were my first phones with an App Store. It was a bit horrible, but I was able to Skype chat and message from them, and participate in IRC chat (which is a prehistoric version of Slack for young people who don't know). These were also purchased because they were iSync compatible. Apps were written in Java and Qt, which were awful, but worked. Mostly.
On June 29, 2007, I had a friend wait outside a store in Beaverton, Ore., to get me an iPhone and Fedex it to me on the other side of the country. Years later, he and I would stand in line together to get the iPhone 5 on its release day.
The iPhone was the first phone that did all the things the others before it had promised. I still think its rounded aluminum back is one of the best designs, with its shiny chrome bezel. I really liked everything about it, even in its early days without copy paste, proper GPS, or MMS picture messaging. It was simply the best phone there was for the time.
This was a time when people still phoned each other regularly, and visual voicemail was the thing that made it the very best phone available. The notion that you could fast forward through messages and hear them out of order made it the phone I had to have. I remember updating to iOS 2 the day it came out in order to have an App Store at Macworld 2008.
Now, the world has changed, but the iPhone has kept up. Messages, FaceTime, and things like iCloud shared notes and calendars have kept it one step ahead of the other options that have sprung up as challengers. I powered on that original iPhone: It still has Textie installed, which I used for sending messages over wifi or cellular data, just as Messages does today.
Back then, in 2007, I was driving to Ohio for my cousin's wedding, and on the way I got a call from a friend from high school. He was getting married and asked if I could attend. Just after the first wedding ended, I drove to Virginia, to somewhere I'd describe as off the beaten path. Afterwards, I tried to navigate home.
Using the iPhone as a compass (because it didn't have turn by turn directions), and being so far out that AT&T didn't have good signal, I'd drive for a while, wait until I had enough signal for AT&T to draw a map, drive a little more, and as long as I got on roads that would take me south and east, I'd eventually hit something that I'd recognize as a road to get me home.
Back in those days, it was still important to be able to read a map as a skill, something that with turn-by-turn and traffic avoidance has become largely unnecessary. For most of my drive, I was a blue dot on graph paper, using the compass to make sure I was heading in something resembling the right direction. By about 2 a.m. I started to find small state roads that had familiar numbers, and could load enough map data to see where I needed to turn. I made it back. I'm sure there may have been a better route, but that's how Maps on iPhone got me home.
HP used to advertise that they were making the computer personal again. Apple always said the Macintosh was the computer for the rest of us. When iPhone launched, Mike Lazardis, CEO of Blackberry, got his hands on one and took it apart. He's reputed to have said, "How did they put a Macintosh inside the phone?"
Apple regularly tells us that the iPad is the future of computing. It all started with that one phone that first saw light of day back in January 2007, that's led to iOS fulfilling the Mac's promise as the computer for the rest of us.
On January 9, 2007, I was at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I was working for a company that made TV tuners for Mac, and we sold in Apple stores across the U.S.
I was setting up the booth at Macworld 2007 while the keynote was going on, and missed out on the big iPhone announcement. Everyone else in the company was at the presentation and came back more excited than I'd ever seen them. At the Apple stage, there were employees taking questions about iPhone with the model displayed in its glass cylinder.
AppleTV was also introduced at the event, and they had tables upon tables of AppleTV and televisions connected so that we could experience Apple's first move into home entertainment. Katie Cotton was on site and handling press requests, which were coming like a barrage. Macworld became overwhelmed overnight with everyone who got on a flight from Las Vegas leaving CES to come see the phone that would change every phone after it.
Years before, I had a Sony Ericsson T616, which I bought because it was on the list of phones that Apple showed as working with iSync. I modified it with OS X sounds and animations (the progress wheel, the 2003 Apple logo, the Jaguar wallpaper) all to make it feel more Apple-like. Having contact and photos sync was powerful. At that time, people were used to having to edit contacts in the phone. Being able to write the contacts at the Mac and sync them across was powerful.
Then I got a few Nokia s60 Symbian-based phones. These were my first phones with an App Store. It was a bit horrible, but I was able to Skype chat and message from them, and participate in IRC chat (which is a prehistoric version of Slack for young people who don't know). These were also purchased because they were iSync compatible. Apps were written in Java and Qt, which were awful, but worked. Mostly.
On June 29, 2007, I had a friend wait outside a store in Beaverton, Ore., to get me an iPhone and Fedex it to me on the other side of the country. Years later, he and I would stand in line together to get the iPhone 5 on its release day.
The iPhone was the first phone that did all the things the others before it had promised. I still think its rounded aluminum back is one of the best designs, with its shiny chrome bezel. I really liked everything about it, even in its early days without copy paste, proper GPS, or MMS picture messaging. It was simply the best phone there was for the time.
This was a time when people still phoned each other regularly, and visual voicemail was the thing that made it the very best phone available. The notion that you could fast forward through messages and hear them out of order made it the phone I had to have. I remember updating to iOS 2 the day it came out in order to have an App Store at Macworld 2008.
Now, the world has changed, but the iPhone has kept up. Messages, FaceTime, and things like iCloud shared notes and calendars have kept it one step ahead of the other options that have sprung up as challengers. I powered on that original iPhone: It still has Textie installed, which I used for sending messages over wifi or cellular data, just as Messages does today.
Back then, in 2007, I was driving to Ohio for my cousin's wedding, and on the way I got a call from a friend from high school. He was getting married and asked if I could attend. Just after the first wedding ended, I drove to Virginia, to somewhere I'd describe as off the beaten path. Afterwards, I tried to navigate home.
Using the iPhone as a compass (because it didn't have turn by turn directions), and being so far out that AT&T didn't have good signal, I'd drive for a while, wait until I had enough signal for AT&T to draw a map, drive a little more, and as long as I got on roads that would take me south and east, I'd eventually hit something that I'd recognize as a road to get me home.
Back in those days, it was still important to be able to read a map as a skill, something that with turn-by-turn and traffic avoidance has become largely unnecessary. For most of my drive, I was a blue dot on graph paper, using the compass to make sure I was heading in something resembling the right direction. By about 2 a.m. I started to find small state roads that had familiar numbers, and could load enough map data to see where I needed to turn. I made it back. I'm sure there may have been a better route, but that's how Maps on iPhone got me home.
HP used to advertise that they were making the computer personal again. Apple always said the Macintosh was the computer for the rest of us. When iPhone launched, Mike Lazardis, CEO of Blackberry, got his hands on one and took it apart. He's reputed to have said, "How did they put a Macintosh inside the phone?"
Apple regularly tells us that the iPad is the future of computing. It all started with that one phone that first saw light of day back in January 2007, that's led to iOS fulfilling the Mac's promise as the computer for the rest of us.
Comments
Thanks Apple!
They weren't alone. Ed Colligan said, those computer guys aren't going to walk in here and be able to do mobile.
Ballmer had a few good ones, on the price, and there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get significant market share, no chance.
Blackberry:
They couldn't understand how Apple could do it - which led to the disbelief, the idea that the demo must have been faked. Honestly, it was a rickety demo, with the developers in the front row taking shots when it didn't crash–but it wasn't faked.
They couldn't understand how AT&T would let them do a real browser. They'd tried, and AT&T had told them they couldn't ship a real browser, so they were in disbelief, "it'll collapse the network!" Which it did at some points.
They couldn't believe Apple got a better deal, and that this would cause them to lose AT&T as a customer.
They thought it wasn't secure, it had a worse keyboard than theirs, and it had terrible battery life. And it did have worse battery life compared to flip phones of the time, which could be expected to last a week on standby, or a few days with little talk time, rather than the iPhone's single day. It turned out, users didn't mind charging the phone every day.
I can't emphasize the disbelief enough: They publicly said that Apple's demo was rigged.
Also: at the time, it was an AT&T exclusive. AT&T had a 45 page book explaining all the ways to use the iPhone, and had the carefully crafted answers to questions about picture messaging (no one really cared about copy and paste at the time, unless you were coming from Palm/Treo or Windows Mobile). Sprint stores actively campaigned against it.
Sprint employees were instructed to point out the price, the unfairness of AT&T having an exclusive contract, the fact that AT&T couldn’t perform repairs (that they had to be done directly through Apple), that AT&T’s insurance wouldn’t cover it, that it was untested, that there was no way the internet would work how they advertised, and that its battery wasn’t removable – and anything else they could think of.
We'll know soon enough.
When the iPhone came out I had been using a Samsung smart phone for years. Actually, it was two devices in one: a phone and a Palm OS based PDA...
The major difference between it and the iPhone was the keyboard. The physical keyboard was easier to use -- but then it restricted the screen size to less than half of what it could be -- so it was a mixed blessing.
And, to be honest, the Palm OS PDA seemed to me to be more functional than anything on the iPhone: As a tech manager it kept track of everything I needed it to keep track of and did it very well. Then, later as I transitioned into healthcare, it stored medical reference books that I needed quick access to...
But, as time went on the Palm OS went into decline while Apple continued to improve the iPhone. And eventually I transitioned to iPhone...
/s
These people who are always claiming Apple is going to fail is just the craziest thing I can imagine. I realize any company can fail and Apple is no exception but why always single out Apple. So many CEOs of other companies said Apple would fail but it was those CEO's companies that failed. There's no future guarantee about anything except most of us die sooner or later. When it comes to products, it's just hard to tell what consumers will like, so you just never know what product will succeed or fail. I personally think all flagship smartphones are amazing and terrific so none are that much worse or better than others to a great degree. They can all do some pretty amazing things.
It's a great time we live in when it comes to tech. I think all smartphone companies have a good chance at having a future because consumers need smartphones. I don't laugh if a company wants to build a smartphone with a physical keyboard because that's their vision and some people may prefer it. Why everyone laughed at Apple for not including a physical keyboard on the iPhone simply didn't make any sense to me. A virtual keyboard wasn't perfect but it certainly was usable and allowed people to have a larger display. People actually said this was stupid but they were so wrong it's unbelievable when I look back on those statements. I think everything should be given some chance instead of simply blowing it off as a failure.
I had several different phones before the iPhone, and as the rumors grew, I was giddy with hope. Having no idea what to expect, I still new a phone from Apple would be my next. Whatever it was going to be, I believed it would be unique and do things no other phone could. And I was right.
It was fascinating on many levels, but the thing that made the biggest, immediate impact to me was the UI, with its combination of software and hardware— specifically, the Home button. No more drilling down and backing out to navigate. A phone that was actually efficient to use!
The future suddenly became dim for my Palm T3 and the creation of the App Store was its death knell. I still have my day one iPhone. I remember how detractors pointed out its 'flaws' and chanting the 'evolutionary, not revolutionary' cliche. They took great pains to point out how almost every single tech feature, hardware or software, had existed previously on some other platform or phone. They completely missed or discounted that nobody has assembled so many of these features on one phone, and so seamlessly integrated three devices into one. They not only didn't see the revolution coming, they didn't know it was already there.
Everybody has their favorite device, platform, or brand. That doesn't in itself doesn't make them a fanboi or hater. Those are choices they make for themselves. Life's too short for me to waste time arguing about what something isn't. I'd much rather look forward to seeing what could and will be.
You might wish to brush up on some of the history, especially the role that Schmidt played (with his being on Apple's board, his subsequent firing), Andy Rubin, the Apple-Samsung legal saga, etc.