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Happy Birthday, iPhone!
The first iPhone was released exactly 15 years ago today. It was a Friday, and I took the day off from work and had a plan. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The iPhone was actually announced in January 2007 at MacWorld in one of the greatest keynotes of all time by Steve Jobs. Steve started out by saying every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. He cited the original Macintosh released in 1984 and the iPod released in 2001. He then stated that Apple was announcing three revolutionary products of this class:
1) A wide-screen iPod with touch controls
2) A revolutionary mobile phone
3) A breakthrough internet communications device
The phone received the most cheers from the crowd. I don’t think we all understood what he meant by a breakthrough internet communications device, but clearly, Steve had the vision for what the iPhone would become.
Jobs kept repeating: “An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator,” as cube icons shifted on the screen. Finally, he asked the crowd, “Are you getting it? These are NOT three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.” He then showed a picture of an iPod with a rotary dial on it.
