Today is the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, which first went on sale on June 29 back in 2007, and we’re taking a look back at its launch and early reception.
Described by Steve Jobs as ‘a revolutionary product that changes everything,’ he teased that Apple was announcing three products: a wide-screen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device before revealing that it was a single device, called the iPhone …
Steve said that the iPhone was both smarter and easier to use than existing smartphones, which had smaller screens, hardware keyboards and whose touchscreens required a stylus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUIxyE2Ns8
In what was by now the signature Apple advertising style, of ads which said little or nothing about the product itself, the first ad appeared during the Oscars – comprising a lot of movie clips of people answering phones before showing the iPhone with a simple ‘Hello … Coming in June.’
Work had begun on the iPhone three years earlier, in 2004, under the codename Project Purple. Steve Jobs revealed during a D8 interview that the company actually started work on the iPad first, but when he saw an early demo of multi-touch and intertial scrolling, he suddenly realized they could use the technology to build a phone.
A phone was a far higher priority than a tablet as the company had already identified smartphones as the product most likely to cannibalize iPod sales.
We’ve recently been hearing more about the story behind the iPhone. Scott Forstall, who headed up the iPhone software team, spoke at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. He and some of the early engineers spoke of what it was like to work on a project in such secrecy.
Forstall, Tony Fadell and Greg Christie gave yet more backstory to the Wall Street Journal, talking about trying 30-40 different ways to use the iPod wheel before giving up on that, and trying countless UI designs before Steve eventually gave them a two-week deadline to create one he liked or have the project taken away from them.
We’ve also seen the launch of a new book The One Device whose subtitle is ‘the secret history of the iPhone.’ The book claims that Apple SVP Phil Schiller insisted that the iPhone needed a hardware keyboard – a claim denied by both Schiller and Fadell.
Reviews
The first four reviewers to be given the chance to try the iPhone recently got together on CBS to reminisce about that experience. It wasn’t an entirely positive one, as Walt Mossberg recalls.
But the conclusion of his joint review with Katherine Boehret was positive.
You can watch the video review here:
Other reviews were less so …
AdAge headed its review Why the iPhone will fail and said that it ‘will be a major disappointment.’
Bloomberg (now offline) described it as ‘nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks.’
TechCrunch ran a piece headed We predict the iPhone will bomb, arguing that battery life and cracked screens would be major issues, and that the ‘virtual keyboard will be about as useful for tapping out emails and text messages as a rotary phone.’
Wired said it was only worth half the price.
And, of course, there was Steve Ballmer.
But other reviews were far more positive, with MacWorld an example.
Gizmodo put together a very balanced encyclopedia of a review which recognized the iPhone as the future, advised waiting for a software update and noted some key missing features.
Steve, though, got it completely right: the iPhone did indeed prove to be a revolutionary product, and it did change everything.
The iPhone interface alone goes beyond the realm of what I thought possible from a small portable device. Is it from the future, this revolutionary pocket computer that will have strangers bashfully asking: “Could I see?” It almost feels that way.
What are your iPhone stories? What was the first one you ever owned, and what brought you on board? Do share your experiences in the comments.
