“The design for the device that would revolutionize mobile phones and, eventually, the culture at large, arose from hatred,” Aaron Pressman and Nicolas Rapp report for Fortune. “When considering whether to create the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs found that people largely despised the phones that they had.”
“‘Everybody has a cell phone, but I don’t know one person who likes their cell phone,’ he once told John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer,” Pressman and Rapp report. “To create a phone people would actually love, Jobs latched onto an important innovation: the touch screen. The display was the key to creating a computing chameleon: a device that could be a phone one minute, a camera the next, and a gaming pad the next.”
“The master showman unveiled his smartphone in January 2007 with one of the most brilliant sales pitches ever.,” Pressman and Rapp report. “Oone year in, Apple introduced a critical new feature that Jobs had initially resisted: the App Store. It enabled iPhone users to buy and install mobile programs from third-party developers directly to their phones, unleashing a wave of creativity and new business models.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Revolutionary.
And, Pressman and Rapp, Apple’s iPhone already is “on top.” Apple owns the cellphone industry’s profits. As we tire of explaining to a seemingly never-ending stream of simpletons: Unit sales are not the most important metric. Not by a long shot.
SEE ALSO:
Apple took 83% of smartphone market profits in calendar first quarter – May 16, 2017
Apple took 79% of global smartphone profits in 2016; Samsung in distant second with only 14% – March 8, 2017
When I watched the video feed of Jan 2007 with Steve holding up the first iPhone, it was electric.
I knew the world had suddenly changed. It took mere seconds for the audience to understand.
I felt the same. He really was the best salesman simply because he co-designed the best products.
SJ considered every product coming out of Apple to be a personal reflection on him. And he loved and had pride in Apple products, almost like they were his children. He shared those emotions on stage. He share his enthusiasm about each product and its potential to transform the world. When SJ pitched a product, you dreamed along with him. Those are a few of the many reasons that SJ is missed.
Thank you for a beautiful tribute.
You have summed up perfectly what is missing from present day Apple presentations … sigh.
Me three 😛
I wanted to throw my high end Nokia phone in to the wall just because Steve showed how the SMS worked. Instead of received, send and drafts folder you could actually see them in the “conversational view.”
I did not know that the world had suddenly changed. And it didn’t – it was not until the iPhone 3G(S) that it really took off. At that point, however, it did result in everything changing – some for the better some for the worse.
Regardless as to whether this has been a benefit or disbenefit, there is no denying that it changed the world and nearly all of our lives.
The world did suddenly change. What’s wrong with it?
The very first iPhone was revolutionary and following iterations were simply evolutionary.
And Steve Jobs at his best in exhibiting his showmanship :-).
Yes, the world did suddenly change. Not for every single person living it (and for many, it is still the same as it was 100 years ago), but the change was truly global. We see that today that over 2 billion inhabitants of our planet have smartphones. There has never been a technological innovation that has penetrated the world so rapidly. And even more importantly, there has never been one that brought such dramatic change in quality of life for many people as did the smartphone. While only about 15% of that global population have iPhones, there is no disagreement that it was iPhone that created Android. And large swaths of developing countries that had entered 21st century without a telephone line have simply skipped land-line phone evolutionary technological step and embraced the smartphone. People living in the squalor of slums or refugee camps have phones, as long as they find ways to charge them.
This is all thanks to the first original iPhone, which paved the way for everything that came after it.