16 years ago (gack!), Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the revolutionary (Jobs was actually underselling something this time) iPhone – it’s an “iPod with touch controls, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device” – on January 9, 2007.
“It’s not just the bestselling gadget ever created: It’s probably the most influential one, too,” Wired wrote in a 2018 retrospective of the first decade of the iPhone. “Its influence goes far beyond other phones — the infrastructure that made the iPhone also enabled drones, smart-home gadgets, wearables and self-driving cars.”
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs, dressed in his signature black mock turtleneck, boasted at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
Jobs, who died in October 2011 after a long battle with cancer, delivered on the drama.
“These are not three separate devices,” he warned. “These are one device. And we’re calling it the iPhone.”
MacDailyNews Take: And, five years before that – over 20 years ago, omg! – our very own SteveJack eerily predicted the iPhone: Is Apple building ‘The Device?’ – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, December 10, 2002
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On this day, the world changed!
On this day, applecynic was getting ready to have a brain explosion. The walled garden App Store hadn’t yet been announced, but applecynic was already cynical about his own brain power, and he has done everything possible over the last decade and a half to prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he is MDN’s perpetual April Fool. The man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. The man who is bald yet wants to own a comb. The man who used Apple products despite hating them. Yep, if you want to know how to succeed in life, seek out applecynic, and then do the opposite of everything he does.
The George Costanza-sequel looza of tech: applecynic.
Well done Steve.
The best product presentation ever by any CEO!
Yes, Steve Jobs iPhone changed the world like no other device in history!!…
I’ve still got one. Nigh on useless now given the changes in networks/apps etc but a nice piece of history nonetheless
The screen laminate is peeling off of my 3G model but it still charges and powers up. My iPad Mini from 2013 that sat unused for 4 years was recently charged and holds up on standby for over a week. Part of Job’s legacy are the solid products that last years (the butterfly keyboards obviously not bearing his fingerprints).