Ten years ago, George W. Bush was president, mortgages were cheap, and Apple’s iPhone went on sale for the first time. That’s right, July 29 marks a decade since the iPhone came out.
SEE: Apple’s first employee: The remarkable odyssey of Bill Fernandez (TechRepublic)
Let’s look back at the top five moments in iPhone’s first decade:
1. The announcement. This happened in January 2007, but the iPhone announcement was an example of Steve Jobs at his best. With rumors flying about Apple doing a phone, Steve Jobs announced three new devices: an iPod, a mobile phone and an internet communications device. Those three devices were the iPhone.
2. Antennagate. Every iPhone is greeted with some kind of controversy over the inevitable bugs and quirks of a brand new model of a product, but the iPhone 4 in 2010 set the template with people demonstrating that holding the phone a certain way reduced the cellular connection. After telling people they were holding it wrong, Apple eventually gave free rubber bumpers out to customers.
3. The imitators. Before the iPhone, smartphone makers designed everything to look like the Palm Treo. Afterwards, they all became black boxes with touchscreens. Android has become the largest mobile operating system in the world following up, and some say improving on, the trail blazed by the iPhone.
4. Siri. Love it or hate it, Siri sparked the imagination when it launched with celebrities in commercials talking to their phones. And just as Google has become a synonym for search, Siri has become the archetype for talking to your phone.
5. The App Store. When the iPhone launched, Steve Jobs said that web apps would be the future and give you everything you need. A year later, in 2008, the App Store was launched and “there’s an app for that” entered the lexicon.
The iPhone is praised, derided, often declared perfect, often declared dead, but no matter what you think of it, it not only changed smartphones, but the way we connect with one another. So happy birthday iPhone.
For more on the iPhone’s tenth anniversary, check out these links from TechRepublic and sister sites:
- Video: 10 years of Cracking Open the Apple iPhone
- iPhone: Best and worst features of the past 10 years
- Gallery: A decade of iOS changes from 1.0 to 11.0
- The enterprise iPhone: Improvements in Apple iOS over the last 10 years (ZDNet)
- Apple’s iPhone turns 10. Where does it go from here? (CNET)
