I guess it’s a sign of getting older, but it’s still hard to believe the iPhone is 16 years old considering it’s relevance and dominance at least in the US.
It’s a much abused term, but fits in this case, it was a game changer especially for Apple of course, but arguably kicked off the modern smartphone industry.
And yes as the haters/skeptics will jump in to state, most of the tech in the iPhone was already available. But the genius IMHO was how it was all uniquely put together.
The biggest thing to my mind was Sculley’s prediction that his “knowledge communicator” (or whatever terminology he was using) would be a $1 trillion dollar global business — one has to at least acknowledge that he got that right.
I’ve never owned one (dodged getting one at a previous job when I couldn’t convince them to make an ebook reader app early on), but have been glad of the influence it has had on the market.
Do need to get the book:
at some point in time.
Despite all his unlikable qualities, Jobs was an incredible marketing showman…“Today introducing THREE revolutionary products”
And if you’ve ever read about how fragile that demo device was, and how terrified his backstage team was that they might not make it through the whole presentation, it was genius…
But I did stand in line at our local AT&T to buy that first, very much beta, release…
Yes, the iPhone launch is taught in several business schools as a textbook example of how to do a new technology product launch including my daughters university
Also, though it’s not the greatest movie generally, every Apple person I’ve worked with has said that they got the part of the iPhone launch in the Michael Fassbender Jobs movie, pretty spot on.
Oddly enough, I have never owned an IPhone. I can’t really tell you why other than the fact that I was a Blackberry user for close to a decade and then Windows and Android phones, from the Nokia to Samsung Notes. I think I’ve had three notes, spanning 8 years or so.
I was a long time Blackberry user going all the way back to when it was essentially a connected two way pager.
I had also earlier purchased an iMac as a “family computer” for my then relatively young kids after having moved way from Apple at their nadir just prior to Jobs coming back.
And it was a combination of being a former Apple user as well as being very intrigued by the idea of a touchscreen based interface, I purchased the original iPhone on impulse as a personal device with money I had gotten from my employer as a bonus. (And the original could only be purchased at full retail, no monthly payment plan)
I’ve had an iPhone ever since. And somewhat oddly enough the iPhone in part opened the door to buying my first Surface Pro, again because of touch and ultimately led to the job I have today.
I consider both the iPhone and the Surface Pro to be genuinely iconic and groundbreaking computing devices.