“Jan. 9 marks nine years since Apple unveiled the first iPhone on the same date in 2007,” Aaron Mamiit reports for Tech Times. “Saying that the smartphone has come a long a way since then would probably still be considered an understatement.”
“On Jan. 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked into a stage to give a keynote presentation on the iPhone, which turned out to be possibly the most important keynote that the late Jobs has ever given in his illustrious career,” Mamiit reports. “In the presentation of the first-generation iPhone, Jobs knocked down the keyboard and the stylus, features that were popular among the high-end mobile phones of the time by BlackBerry, Motorola and Palm, and replaced it with a multitouch interface.”
“The first iPhone only featured a 3.5-inch screen with 320 x 480 pixel resolution, a 400 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM, a 2-megapixel camera and up to 16 GB of storage. It also only operated on AT&T’s EDGE networks instead of 3G, and was priced at $499 for the 4 GB model and $599 for the 8 GB model,” Mamiit reports. “Rumors are claiming that the next version of the smartphone will have an aluminum alloy or liquidmetal body, will be waterproof, and that the home button will be removed to better highlight 3D Touch.
“The iPhone 7 is also expected to be powered by 3 GB of RAM and Apple’s A10 chip,” Mamiit reports. “The smartphone will most likely be announced by Apple in September, when it will be adding one more chapter to the history of the iPhone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Revolutionary.
By SteveJack
Here’s how I reacted to the iPhone on January 9, 2007:
Apple really only botched one thing with the iPhone – its name.
Oh sure, you can argue that the top model’s 8GB of storage is too small, but with 6 months to go that spec (and others) can and probably will change; Apple isn’t even taking pre-orders on the device, yet. So things can change. One thing’s for sure, Apple has frozen a nice chunk of the smartphone market, not to mention some of the iPod market, too.
Back to the naming issue: Apple’s “iPhone” isn’t really a phone at all. It’s really a small touchscreen Mac OS X computer, a Mac nano tablet, if you will. Here’s how misnamed the iPhone is: Some people are complaining that Jobs didn’t spend enough time on the Mac in his keynote! Folks, iPhone is not only a Mac, it’s the most radical new Mac in years! What’s to stop Apple from making a 12-inch model (and larger, and smaller) one of these days (use the headset for the phone, please) and calling it a Mac tablet?
It has an iPod built in, yes, so it can be used solely as a “true video widescreen iPod,” if that’s what you want. And even using it just like that, the price is about right. It also has a smartphone built in, too; except this smartphone’s UI actually makes sense and is usable. Even if you just use it as a smartphone, the price is right, too.
But, the main thing about the “iPhone” is that it’s really a pocket Mac. It has email, SMS, full-featured Web browsing, and much more. But, beyond that, it is a platform that’s just sitting there waiting for Apple to sell software for it. Just imagine games with the large multi-touch display and the built-in accelerometer!
Imagine all of the other software possibilities, too. Given Apple’s history with the iPod (closed to third-party developers), today I’d have to guess that they’ll keep the iPhone under tight control, too. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe not. Still, Apple could do a lot with the platform all by themselves. What about ringtones sold via Apple’s iTunes Store? With Wi-Fi onboard these things could beam data between each other like crazy. The possibilities are endless.
No matter how you look at it, for all that it can do even now, the device is very well priced and should fly off the shelves regardless of its name.
Maybe Apple named it iPhone because of all of the free publicity and buzz that name has already garnered. Maybe they want this trojan horse to slip into the market first under the guise of being the best smartphone available and they’ll exploit its capabilities as a full-fledged platform later. Perhaps it’s easier to explain and sell as a phone first. It probably would have been even easier to just have called it iPod (6G) and listed “iPhone” as a new iPod feature – that’s how they sold video, right?
I also have to wonder what will happen to Safari’s market share after the iPhone starts shipping. All of those iPhones hitting sites with their Safari browsers are going to have an impact if they’re counted properly. What about Mac OS X market share? Each iPhone is technically a Mac, right? If so, Apple will at least double their Mac shipments in the first year alone. Let’s hope IDC and Gartner count them all!
So, yeah, it can be a phone, even the very best smartphone, but it’s so much more and holds so much promise that the name “iPhone” hardly does it justice.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, former web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section who also basically called the iPhone over five years before Steve Jobs unveiled it.
SEE ALSO:
The only thing really wrong with Apple’s iPhone is its name – January 9, 2007
Apple debuts iPhone: touchscreen mobile phone + widescreen iPod + Internet communicator – January 9, 2007
Is Apple building ‘The Device?’ [revisited] – January 9, 2007
Is Apple building ‘The Device?’ – December 10, 2002
‘What’s hard for people to remember, and this is good I think, going back to pre-iPhone there was no app market for apps on phones. Phones were sold in truly walled gardens. The thought that a developer could make an app for a phone was unheard-of.’
‘Steve Jobs Bio: The Unauthorized Autobiography.’
Kijk eens naar dit boek in de iBooks Store: https://itun.es/nl/qB1h3.l
Completely untrue. Anyone could write a Symbian, or Windows Phone application (such as they were) freely. There was no App Approval Process. There were scores of repositories such as Handango, MobilePlanet, PocketPC4All, etc.
Microsoft even put out a versi9on, for free, of Visual Basic for Windows CE devices.
Indeed! In 2003, I had a VoiceStream (which became T-Mobile later) VisorPhone for my Handspring PalmOS device. Four years before the iPhone, I had a hand-held touch-screen phone that could dial-up to the internet, install various Palm-OS apps, go online, look up maps, etc.
IT was nothing like the iPhone, but there was a modest ecosystem of many apps for it, quite a few free.
SteveJack, from your 2002 prediction piece could you explain an original thinking behind writing this paragraph: ‘…And only Apple, in concert with a partner like Verizon, Cingular, or Sprint, has everything in place to make “The Device” a reality today…’? You didn’t mention AT&T as a potential partner for Apple’s oncoming iPhone?? Why???
@dominik:
You need to re-read the history of Cingular & AT&T.
The iPhone was the first handheld portable “computer” (which became evident with the App Store in 2008). Nokia and Blackberry made the mistake of thinking of the iPhone as a “phone” . . . . think about it, today people rarely will “call you” and “talk” with you–they’re more likely to message you, etc.
You bring up an interesting point, that might counter MDN’s assertion back then that the iPhone was mis-named.
The app store was not yet ready when the iPhone was announced, and wouldn’t be available until a year after it was released. Until then, only web apps were available and Apple made a big deal about them being the future.
By *not* touting it as a handheld computer that made phone calls, Apple misled competitors into thinking the phone and mobile browser was the main threat, giving Apple time to get the app store ready (or, if you believe some rumours, give some execs time to convince Steve Jobs to allow native apps).
This had a nice side effect of forcing a lot of websites to stop catering to IE first, and ensured Safari was the first widely-supported mobile browser.
I was there at the keynote. It was an awesome unveiling. It was long, detailed and coherent. No makes presentations like Steve did.
I was also in the room with Steve that day.😄 You could tell it was an important moment in the history of personal computing. A Giant Leap really.
iPhone One maximum storage capacity was only 8GB not 16GB.
When first released, that is correct. However I seem to recall that some time near the middle of the cycle, a 16GB version was introduce and the 4GB version was discontinued.
I only saw the video, but it was blindingly obvious what a revolution this was compared to anything else to date. Some however like John C. Dvorak where inexcusably clueless as to what was unveiled. Something that was painfully obvious when you saw Dvorak later that day (or was it the next day) on a panel talking about the iPhone.
The device was called the iPhone because it needed the network connectivity of the phone system to deliver the revolution in personal communications that it brought and because the selling model of the day was a 2 yr phone purchase contract that involved a small upfront payment followed by monthly installments until you owned it – which made it affordable for millions.
The reality is that the key apps that are on the phone are those that revolve around personal communication – Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc. Some people spend their entire day communication over the network – even if they are not using the phone element.
And look how much innovation and change we have experienced since the release. The iPhone experience has evolved and surpassed the original release by leaps and bounds. Oh wait, it’s actually pretty much the same. 9 years of the same interface, and clunky app management. So much for think different…
That’s what happens when you so thoroughly nail the interface design. It was so completely and perfectly done that the iOS UI/UX has needed almost no enhancement.
Come to think of it, the exact same can be said about the Mac interface, which continues decades later in a slightly modified forms known as OSX and Windows, the later which was/is a direct ripoff of the original MacOS. Just as Android in its many flavors are merely extensions of the foundational example first provided by iOS.
In other words all the innovation was built in from the jump. The innovation is in the interaction between the user and the device. That’s why even the phone is really just an App in terms of usage. And why Apps have become the centerpoint of the user interaction.
Now various elements of the interface may have existed prior to but none of them were combined in such a manner that everything that was to follow would use those exactly same sorts of interactions.
Apple is where real innovation occurs while everywhere else is where derivatives are born. You can tell this simple truth by how little it has needed modification over the last 9 years. You will just need to learn how to deal with it.
I see you enjoyed the Kool-Aid. My point is, the interface is clunky. Just a bunch of icons on a “desktop.” They aren’t even dynamically updating icons, they just sit there.
Apple’s innovation is over. All they do now is make things bigger and thinner. If I didn’t dislike Google so much, I’d be using a Galaxy. Shame the Windows phones aren’t really an option – now there’s some innovation, but they’re too late to the game, just like that Zune product that failed to really catch on.
Rob, don’t be a tool. Innovation is over. LMAO. If you believe that then you must obviously believe that there is no innovation at all.
Google hasn’t innovated one single thing since PageRank. Everything else was a series of betas thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Even their advertising business was nothing more than a ripoff of Overture. Nothing else, including Android and Chromebooks, makes any money nor covers any new innovative ground what-so-ever.
Now onto you other logical fallacies. What purpose does dynamically updating icons serve? REALLY…you should just quit if that’s all you’ve got, becuase you’re in way over your head. There’s no real need, even for a stock ticker; which by the way, would be delayed by at least 20 minutes. But, hey if you need an example of how wrong and clueless you are, then look no further than the clock app on the iPhone. How’s that for Real Time Dynamic.
As for Windows Phone, now I know ‘you be trollin’. Microsoft spent over a decade (during the Dark Ages of computing), without Apples’ steadfast leadership to guide them, trying to and failing to figure out where the tech landscape was headed. Everything was a failure from WinCE to PocketPC to TabletPC to MediaCenter; all of which were based upon some half decade or more prior Apple innovations, such as the Newton Message Pad. But hey now that they have Apple’ innovation engine to follow again now you can claim them to be innovating However, what’s really unique in the interaction. Exactly . . . NOTHING!
Why don’t you go to the playground with the other children and let the adults do the talking.
To be clear, I don’t like having to call others children, but when you use statements like drink the KoolAid, I find that as derogatory, silly and childish as fanboy or fanboi.. I have zero tolerance for such insipid comments, because I don’t suffer foolish behavior.
Apple’s innovation died with Steve Jobs. Each year we see Apple’s share of the market in tablets and phones drop. They’re too big to fail, plus people like you will always be there to buy their products, but their dominance in the tablet and phone market is over. If they didn’t have you so locked into their ecosystem, even more people would switch.
And finally, the Kool-Aid comment was light-hearted, made in jest and apparently taken much too seriously. You need to get out more. Step away from the computer for a bit and experience life. Your lugubrious demeanor distresses me.
Apple’s innovation died with Steve Jobs.
Wow, who’s drinking the KoolAid now, Rob? That meme has been regurgitated so often that it’s deader than Steve Jobs. Almost as, but not quite as, dead as your philosophical Apple hatred, or anti Apple bias.
Apples share of the cell phone market has never dropped with the exception of a single year 2013. Their share of smart phone market has peaked at 27% but their share of the entire show market has not declined. In fact android has done nothing but replace Java phones, Symbian phones and Windows mobile phones; oh and the occasional BlackBerry.
So just to be clear apples share continues to grow currently 14% of the entire show market. When they started people said that Apple couldn’t complete with the Big 5, while Steve jobs said he was trying to get 1%. So much for your meme of declining market share.
As for the tablet market without apple there wouldn’t be a tablet market just as there was before the iPad. Apples market share of the real tablet market has not declined but has increased even as sales decline. You can’t consider e-book readers and TV viewing screens larger than 5 inches to be considered tablets when they do nothing but those pecific singular things.
The above is just like how PCs are counted. Everything that has any flavor of Windows was considered a PC, even single purpose things such as shipping stations, POS devices, touchscreen kiosks and electronic billboards. The exact inverse was done when the iPad was released and IDC and Gardner refused to count them as PCs. Meanwhile they had been counting Windows CE products as full-fledged Windows PCs for years.
So be careful what you read into marketshare statistics, for you would be wrong on everything you said by believing that they’re not biased. Of course it’s no surprise that you’d believe them, given your own biases.
Finally, the only switching going on is Windows to Mac and/or Chromebook and Android to iPhone/iPad. Any other belief is simply delusional. And so, with that, I wish you a good day in your deluded universe.
The fanboy is strong in this one…
I grow weary of you. Enjoy your 9 year old interface and please, step away from the computer once in a while, you need it. Badly.