Apple’s iPhone came out 15 years ago and changed the world

It was on June 29, 2007 that the original iPhone went on sale in the US, and it was probably the day that it really started shaking what users expected from a phone.

We and the telephone industry have known about it for over five months. But it was only when you could buy it that the impact of this small device began to be felt – even within Apple.

“[Going on sale] is a happy moment, but it’s also a stressful one, ”Apple’s Tony Fadell told the Wall Street Journal in 2022. “What’s going to happen when it goes out into the world?”

“It was incredible,” said Greg Joswiak, now senior vice president of global marketing at Apple, in the same interview. “I mean, it’s still it just gives me a little reaction, because it was history.”

“The beginning of the iPhone project happened from the iPod project,” says Fadell, best known for his work on Apple’s iPod. “We started seeing these feature phones with cameras that start adding digital music features, tools to your phone.”

“And it was clear that they might be able to catch up with us at some point with this lead we had with the iPod,” he continued. “We said … what’s the future of the iPod? And if people have two devices in their hand, which one will they pick up every time.”

Most of the concerns and criticisms of the original iPhone now seem peculiar, but mainly because the iPhone itself has reformed our ideas of what is normal. At the time, the best smartphones had certain key features that the iPhone was missing, and many people were missing.

For example, it was then a major problem that the battery was sealed and could not be changed. It was a big problem that the iPhone did not have a physical keyboard, and that you could not add memory cards, even if you can remember what it was for.

Oddly enough, however, it was not at all a big deal that the iPhone was shipped without an App Store. Sure, a lot of people wanted third-party applications, but that was not on the list of reasons why so many predicted that the iPhone would surely fail.

One completely valid and possible reason why the iPhone could have been doomed was that it originally only ran on AT&T. Undoubtedly a limitation, and undoubtedly reason enough that some people did not buy, that exclusivity also became part of why iPhone was successful.

Apple joined forces with AT&T because it – or rather the Cingular network then bought by AT&T – agreed to Apple’s demands for control. At the time, it was normal for networks to have at least a say in the hardware designs of phones that would use their cell phone service.

It was also normal for those networks to insist on the inclusion of their own applications on the devices. But Apple had none of that, even if it meant starting with just one network in the US.

So the iPhone was Apple’s design, Apple’s product, and AT&T did not have any of the cell carriers’ usual influence on the phone. The result was a phone that had none of the carriers’ typical limitations, and that’s where the world – and Apple – changed.

“Apple’s culture has changed dramatically because the people who had them always sent them messages or they always sent emails,” Tony Fadell said. “When people were in the meetings, they did it all the time, it became a constant deluge of emails and messages and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, no one could get away from them.’ And you think something is different here.

At the time, it was also normal for the price of phones to be subsidized so that users got it cheap at the beginning and paid dearly over time. Apple broke with that tradition, at least initially, by selling the original iPhone for $ 499 and $ 599, depending on whether you had the 4GB or 8GB version.

In 2022, the iPhone 13 will start at $ 799 with 128GB. The latest iPhone 14 is actually significantly heavier than the original, at 174 grams compared to 135 grams. The iPhone 13 Pro weighs even more at 204 grams, with the iPhone 13 Pro Max a long way to double the weight at 240 grams.

But then comes the iPhone 13 Pro Max with a 6.7-inch screen, instead of a 3.5-inch one, with the iPhone 13 mini having a 5.4-inch screen. And the iPhone 13 Pro Max comes with a 12MP three-lens camera system on the back, and another 12MP one on the front, instead of the original iPhone’s single 2.0MP rear camera.

These are all the kind of specs that Android manufacturers would come up with while trying to compete with the iPhone. Apple was not amused, especially not with Samsung.

“They were annoying,” Greg Joswiak told the Wall Street Journal in 2022. “And they were annoying, because as you know, they ripped off our technology.”

“They took the innovations we created and created a weak copy of it and just put a bigger screen around it,” he said, “and you know so yes, we were not very satisfied.”

Imitation was not seen as flattery, but it should have been seen as a sign that this type of smartphone is the future. But in the beginning, so many believed that it would go nowhere.

There’s a lot about the original iPhone presentation that is missed today because of what we know happened next – and because of what we forgot about phones in 2007. At the time, we believed phones were an established technology and Steve Jobs worked hard on his speech to change our minds.

Not only did he point out shortcomings in the phones we all knew and, if not loved, at least accept, but he also positioned Apple extremely precisely. In reality, Apple has never done anything like the iPhone, but look at the speech and soon you will believe that the company had a legendary background in mobile devices.

We now know that the whole presentation was held with rope and prayers. Nevertheless, it is a piece of precision work that not only introduces a device, it positions it.

And yet, at that time, enough people were either not convinced – or would rather not be convinced.

Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer, for example, mocked the iPhone for just about every reason it would succeed and Windows Phones failed.

“There is no chance that the iPhone will gain any significant market share,” he said in April 2007. “No chance. It’s a $ 500 subsidized item. They can make a lot of money. But if you actually look at the 1.3 billion phones sold, I would prefer our software in 60% or 70% or 80. to have% of them, than I would have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple can get. “

Blackberry HUBs were privately distributed across the iPhone at the time. Mike Lazaridis said of Apple that “these guys are really, really good.” Jim Balsillie said, “That’s right, we’ll be right.”

The technology industry is strangely conservative about change, it tends to base its judgment on what has worked before. So did much of the technology media industry.

June 29, 2007 undoubtedly seemed like a huge success for Apple. There were queues everywhere, it seemed like it was the big hit that, well, it was in the end.

However, things should have gone a little less well than hoped, as in September, Apple lowered prices. It dropped the 4GB version and cut the 8GB from $ 599 to $ 399. If you could get your hands on one, unsold 4GB models were cut to $ 299.

Steve Jobs later reported that he had received hundreds of emails from angry buyers paying the full price – and so Apple rectified things. Or at least, it made something of an effort.

For a time, anyone who paid the full price could have a credit of $ 100. It still meant they paid $ 100 more than later buyers, and that did not mean they got that cash back.

Nevertheless, if you paid the full amount, you tended not to be unhappy with the phone itself. The price, definitely, but not the iPhone.

“As it turns out, a lot of the hype and some of the criticism is justified,” David Pogue wrote in the New York Times. “The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It’s doing things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found on even the most basic phones.”

“Despite some flaws and features omissions, the iPhone is, by balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer,” write Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret in the Wall Street Journal. “In particular, its software sets a new bar for the smartphone industry, and its smart finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to general features.”

According to Statistics, Apple sold 1.9 million iPhones in 2007, despite not being available until the end of June. And despite the fact that he did not see a price reduction until September.

It is not possible to compare that year directly with the current day, as Apple stopped publishing sales numbers for the iPhone in 2018. However, in the latest data before that cut-off date, Apple sold 216.76 million iPhones in 2017.

“We have created an amazing tool to help people with how they learn, to help with how they communicate, how they are entertained,” Joswiak said at the 15th anniversary. “It is a powerful tool, but at the same time we want to help people [with] the fact that moderation is needed. “

“But we do not earn our money in engagement,” he continued. “There is no [such thing as the] the more you use your iPhone, the more money we make. “

“That’s not how it works, right?” he said. “We just want you to have this wonderful experience and sometimes it does [you’ve got to] temper how much you are going to use it … to moderate how much you want to use it. “

“Truly, we just thought it’s going to be a fun, easy-to-use thing when you want to do some messaging,” Tony Fadell said. “[We] did not think it would become the center of your life. ”

The original iPhone was discontinued on July 15, 2008, but it lives on in the gear collections of many Apple fans. It lives on in the iPhone 13 series and the upcoming iPhone 14 series.

And it also lives on in the screens and technology of just about every smartphone you can possibly buy today.

Maybe Samsung, Microsoft, Huawei and the rest of the phones would have come up that were all screens, all multi-touch screens, that made the world a revolution.

Apple has, and the iPhone is a rare case of when you can determine the time that an entire industry has changed. Maybe that date was the original unveiling of the iPhone, maybe it was during the five months and 20 days we waited and other manufacturers scrambled.

Or maybe it was June 29, 2007 around 9:41 AM Pacific.