“Today is the [fifth] anniversary of the release of the original iPhone, and for Cult of Mac’s writers, it’s a particularly important birthday: not only does June 29th mark the anniversary of one of our most all-time beloved gadgets, but it’s also a day so momentous that it has rippled through every aspect of our professional lives as both Apple fans and writers,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac.
“To mark the occasion, five of Cult of Mac’s writers got together to talk about where we were when the first iPhone came out, what it meant for us then and what it means for us now,” Brownlee reports.
Check out their stories, and tell Cult of Mac – and MacDailyNews (below)! – your stories – in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Cult of Mac‘s article appeared on the iPhone’s fourth anniversary, but it works regardless of the year.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David Martin” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple’s revolutionary iPhone turns five: How it changed the world – June 27, 2012
1st in line.
Selling the 1st iPhone purchased in my state to S. D. Who I still see occasionally in the store and around town.
You got me beat.. 12th in line
Lines? Pfft. I went to the Clarendon (VA) store at 5:30. Saw there was a line, said, “f— that.” So I went over to Mexicali Blues in had dinner and a couple beers. Walked by the Apple Store on my way home, encountered no line, bought my first iPhone and went home to spend the next two hours waiting for AT&T’s activation servers to allow me to connect.
In line with my son, buying the first two iPhones sold in Athens, GA. We even got interviewed by the local news!
Probably at work, being a responsible employee, talking on my Motorola Q.
Same here – except mine was a BlackBerry. That seems so long ago …
Red Razr … Spent 4 years with that phone. Still have it in a pile somewhere.
Dunno what I was using, it was the whatever the free Verizon feature phone with a USB connection was at the time. Even then I was using OnSync to keep my phone and Mac address books in sync.
Of all things I was at a company testing about 80 different feature phones for a new media delivery service. I had jumped at the chance because I had heard that it had a connection with Cingular, which I had heard was getting the iPhone.
Alas, it wasn’t anything to do with the iPhone, but when I bought mine, and brought it to work, I was instantly aware that what I was doing now was testing a pointless service on 80 devices which had been rendered instantly obsolete.
I was in Moscone West, about 20 rows back from the stage.
-jcr
+1
You were 20 rows closer to history being made. You have seen Jobs, first hand, at one of his best.
Many can just retire with that highlight.
Nice story.
Saw news of the event on tv. Didn’t pay too much attention to it as I had just got out of the wireless business the year before. 5 years changes a lot. I am almost fully converted to Apple, and I await every announcement like it’s Christmas morning. Funny though that the one device that still alludes me is the iPhone. Waiting for the new one later this year…
Wasn’t the iPhone released in 2007? This would be the fifth anniversary, wouldn’t it?
The Cult of Mac article is a year old.
I drove past the local At&t store, saw the line, went to Ratatouille with gf, drove back past At&t store, saw no line, ran in and got my iPhone in 5-10 mins.
At school in 3rd grade
Just out of third grade listening to me CDs in a cd player portable by somy
Watched the keynote, knew I had to have one. June 29, 2007 I had a morning meeting so I sent my secretary to stand in line for me until I could arrive. Nice long line with lots of happy excited people waiting for the doors to open, which I believe was 4 or 5 o’clock for the first release.
I remember, who was loughing, when the iPhone was presented:
1. Balmy
2. The guys of RIM
3. The guys of Nokia
No other comment…
Balmy was the worse of the lot. His inane laugh about the new iPhone was priceless. He’s one of those people who goes down to the water to see what all the fuss is about just after the tide has rapidly receded.
I was working at an Apple Store playing with before anyone else while the line outside the black curtain grew. One of the coolest moments of my life sharing it with some of the most fanatic Apple fans in the world.
I was working on the stopmo film CORALINE in Hillsboro, Oregon. Man there was just a couple of us flashing our iPhones around, including one or two animators, like some private club. There are few times in my life I was as thrilled with a piece of amazing technology in my pocket.
Actually, thought the phone was a bit underwhelming.
Stood in line on the first day, dude handing out Day 1 iPhone shirts in the west LA mall when security shut him down, very slow line as AT&T authentication systems were crashing, moms walking by with baby strollers calling us “stupid” for waiting in line for a cell phone.
Then, the phone didn’t do a whole lot. You had to scroll down hundreds of contacts to find a name to call, and don’t forget the AT&T data system crashed in many cities for the first week so the phone didn’t even work that well. Some stranger asked if he should get one that day and I told him to wait a few months.
Not to mention, there were no apps, and I can’t remember the web apps at the time but I don’t think there were that many.
So basically, I thought it didn’t do too much except have nice big buttons in the nice screen, the web looked great, and it was an improvement from my Handspring Treo that had rudimentary internet, apps, email, and phone from 5 years before.
But I knew it had potential, that this was going to be bigger than the iPod, and it certainly was! Been in line on day one for 3 other versions, and am happy enough with this current one not to upgrade.
Happened to be meeting a guy from RIM. I said in the meeting that it looked like they were probably going to be finished (I’m not kidding, I actually said that). He didn’t think that was going to happen, but there was a little doubt in his voice. I don’t think he quite knew what to make of the iPhone. For the first two or three years they proved me wrong. Sales kept going up. Stock was up. Now it’s all over.
When Steve Jons said they were 5 years ahead of the competition, he was almost right. If Sndroid hadn’t copied them, it would have been 6.
bought the 8gb the second day it was out for $599, wasn’t all that impressed at the store or taking it home: then I used it.
boom.
I was #158 in line. We all had a lot of fun. I still have my 8GB phone, its box, and the nice little shopping bag it came in 🙂
I called a friend, and she and some other friends were at a sushi place and demanded I bring it right over to show them… I got a kamikaze roll and a couple big Sapporos out of that 🙂
BTW the only reason I know I was #158 is one of the Apple employees was walking the line, counting us up!
I picked my mother from the airport that afternoon. She had just spent 3 months in Togo, West Africa, volunteering with a missionary. Yet she had Internet over there and had heard of the iPhone. She knew very little except Apple had come out with a phone. She emailed me and asked if I was getting one. I said, “Definitely.” she wrote back, “Get me one, too.” She hadn’t realized they wouldn’t be on sale until she got back to the States. On the way home from the airport we stopped at AT&T store and got me added to her plan and everything set (I had an AT&T prepaid phone at the time and wanted to keep the number). There was a huge line out the door, but they were iPhone buyers. Since we were just doing other business, they let us inside. Then I took her home at about four o’clock and drove back to the mall. I got there at 8, worried about the line. The line was gone. I actually found a parking spot close to the Apple Store on a Friday night. I ran into the Apple Store and bought two 8GB iPhones. $1200. Seems insane now, but at the time it was an okay deal. Took just five minutes. Went home and my home was too tired after her trip to bother with the phone so we set hers up the next day. I stayed up till midnight trying to get mine activated (this was the self activation through iTunes). Finally got it working. Amazing. Now I’m several iPhones later. My mom also. She loves hers. She used to reply to your email 3 months later. Now it’s 3 minutes. She’s always on it. Loves Words With Friends. Definitely will be in line for the new iPhone this fall!
In line with my wife (fiancée at that time) at the AT&T store.
The plan was to get one for me and a second one to throw on eBay. Once we walked out of the store though, she knew she had to keep the second one.
We’ve had every iPhone on launch day since then. Love it!
Working at Apple.
I wasn’t anywhere I remember. Probably at work not thinking about it. I was a Windows user in 2007 and thought the hype surrounding the iPhone was just that – hype. So I didn’t pay it that much attention. Certainly I wasn’t going to join the queue as I saw it as a piece of interesting, but very expensive tech that didn’t do anything spectacularly well compared to the Palm Treo that I had at the time.
I remember going down to the Apple store a week later when all the initial fuss had died down to see for myself what this Jesus phone was all about and came away slightly impressed but not overawed. It was a nice shiny piece of tech but much, much too expensive for what it did, which was an electronic contact list that you could scroll through to make calls. There was no value proposition in it for me.
But since the launch of the iPhone 4, I have been a ready convert to the Apple ecosystem. The iPhone was my first Apple product and it has been followed since then by a long string of other Apple products. I guess I only fell for the Steve Jobs RDF when it became clear to me that the iPhone had morphed into a mini computer by the addition of iTunes and the App Store.
I love how you recast your lack of vision as calm, metered patience.
Bingo, ChrissyOne!
It’s dumb comments like yours that make me hate dumbshit fanboys that are blinded by the RDF irrespective of use or utility. Get your own perspective and write your own stories. It’s blind stupidity like yours that show a lack of critical analysis.
At least you’re not angry.
BLN, you’re such a classy guy.
On announcement day, I was refreshing 5 different live blogs, then watching the recorded keynote. The day it shipped, I dropped Sprint Palm Treo. Then I went to what used to be the Cingular store and now had an AT&T banner.
6the or 7th in line. We had to drive an hour the day after my birthday to get there.
I was #7 in line @ AT&T getting my fabulous new iPhone!
I don’t remember exactly what number we were in line, probably around 200 at the Apple Store La Cantera in San Antonio. The sun was blazing, there was no breeze, and the temperature was in the upper 90s. We were grabbing any shade we could find. It was so much fun to be with like-minded people and to share in the enthusiasm. Got one iPhone and had to wait a couple of days for AT&T to figure out how to activate it. All-in-all, a great day.
Oh, and I used my original iPhone for two years until the 3GS came out. Still have it and the box it came in. The most amazing electronic device I’ve ever owned! I was hooked from the moment I watched Steve Jobs’ keynote back in January ’07.
Hard to remember life before iphone. Had been promoted at work and also started dating a nice guy, so things were looking up. Was still using an old flip-phone on Verizon. That day my new beau came to visit me at work and told me about iPhone, but I didn’t ‘get it’ so he decide to show me. After work we went to AT&T and he bought me a 16gb (if memory serves?) and an 8gb for himself. The sales guy transferred my contacts, and suddenly I had a new phone, on his account. Maybe it’s silly to say, but somehow it was like being handed a life raft. It changed my life. What a guy!
In the washroom.
First in line at the Knox Street store.
So where was I? Well, I was in line at the University Village Apple store to buy my first iPhone. It was the best phone I’d ever used up to that point, and I never regretted for an instant my decision to purchase it, especially when Apple gave me a $200 rebate.
That phone lasted about 3 years before the battery started giving out, which I used an an excuse to buy an iPhone 4, which I’m still using now. So in 5 years, I’ve had two phones, and zero desire or interest in switching to anything else.
THANK YOU Apple, for changing the whole mobile landscape and offering me a great device. People have completely forgotten how dreadful ‘feature phones’ used to be, but I haven’t.
It’s also worth noting here:
AAPL price on June 29 2007 – $122.04
Designed an informative ASF (Alternative Story Format) for the front page of a newspaper published on iPhone launch day. When I was younger, long line excitement had more appeal. On day two, walked right in and bought the baddest iPhone in the store. It worked great for years and upgraded to the 4S in October. Why buy the imitator, when you can buy the innovator? 🙂
I was at work, watching the execs glant off to get their iPhone 1s. I later got mine in August. 8GB. But in 2007, went to WWDC. I got to the keynote, but was in an overflow room. Or was that 2009? Well either I missed the keynote and made the ’09, I can’t remember. I can tell you this, the GS was as exciting as the iPhone 1, if not more so. I have had every single release since 1st, and bank on it every year. Woe is me.