iPhone: 10 Years of Empowering People on the Go

I remember the gasp that sucked the air out of the room during the Macworld keynote when Steve Jobs said, “It’s an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. Are you getting it?” That was on January 9th, 2007, and it started what felt like the longest wait ever leading up to the original iPhone launch 10 years ago today.

Apple’s iPhone hit store shelves 10 years ago today

The iPhone changed the smartphone landscape overnight with its revolutionary design—it didn’t have a stylus or a physical keyboard and instead relied on finger taps and swipes. It’s flat glass and metal slab body became the blueprint for almost every smartphone that followed.

Despite that glowing introduction, the iPhone was far from perfect when it launched and there was plenty of criticism for Apple’s entry into the smartphone market.

The iPhone’s Strong Yet Rocky Start

Big name smartphone makers at the time, like Palm and RIMM (now Blackberry) slammed Apple saying they couldn’t make the jump from computers to phones. They also said ditching the the physical keyboard was a huge mistake. Microsoft’s Steve Balmer openly mocked the iPhone for its virtual keyboard, too.

In the end Apple got the last laugh because Palm was sold to HP and eventually faded away, Blackberry is in a death spiral, and Microsoft pulled out of the smartphone market.

Still, that first iPhone was a hobbled device. It didn’t include basic features like copy and paste, and you couldn’t print from it, plus used EDGE cellular data when other companies were adopting 3G. The only way to do anything with Notes files was to mail them to yourself and open them on your Mac, and there were no third-party apps.

Compared to today’s iPhone 7, the original iPhone seems like a hobbled smartphone at best. And yet people still lined up to buy an iPhone on launch day to be among the first to get one.

That painfully limited iPhone changed my technology world because it was like having my whole office in my pocket. Instead of taking my PowerBook (plus iPod, Palm Tungsten PDA, and Motorola Razr) with me everywhere and periodically stopping at WiFi hotspots to check my email I could use my iPhone anywhere I had a cellular or WiFi connection. It revolutionized how I think about my tech gear and communicate.

Next up: The do-it-all phone and empowering people

The Do-it-all iPhone

As crazy as it sounds, the iPhone freed me. It set me free from my desk, from wired internet connections, and from carrying my laptop everywhere I went.

Instead of lugging a bag full of electronics with me all day I could drop a phone in my pocket and head out the door without worrying about being out of touch. It was as if chains had been lifted from me and I was empowered to do so much more than I could before.

While the iPhone was doing so much just for me, it also was changing how we looked at cell phone carriers. Before the iPhone, cell carriers dictated phone features and price points. After the iPhone carriers had to give up much of their control over smartphone models and rethink pricing for devices and contracts.

The iPhone’s Human Breakthrough

The first iPhone was like the Commodore Pet 2001 and Apple II+ for me: keystone devices that changed my tech life in a deep way. The single most profound change the iPhone made for me, however, wasn’t something that affected me directly. In fact, it wasn’t even part of the original iPhone.

The day I saw the iPhone as a powerfully humanizing device, something that transformed technology from silicon and glass to a life changing extension of who we are, was in June 2010 when the iPhone 4 shipped. The iPhone 4 was the first model with a front facing camera which gave us FaceTime calling in our hand.

I was in an Apple Store on launch day and saw three people playing with a couple iPhones. They were far more animated than everyone else and so excited as they were playing with the phones. So excited they started crying.

They were deaf and were using FaceTime to sign to each other. For the first time in their lives they could carry on a conversation over the phone just like people who can hear. That’s the humanizing power of the iPhone.

What Apple showed us is that the iPhone is about more than the tech making up its elements—an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. The iPhone is about empowering people to work and express themselves the way they want, and sometimes make a call, too.

Share this post