On January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs took to the stage to announce the first iPhone, in a keynote that would revolutionize the industry and set the tone for every major tech announcement since. Later reporting would reveal that the phone Jobs was using was a barely functional prototype, and many of the engineers were terrified it would fail in the middle of the demo — but the keynote is still a remarkable combination of vision, engineering, and stagecraft. It's strange to think how fundamentally the technology world shifted over the course of an hour-long speech.
Comments
I ♥
By tofanheu on 01.09.15 9:37am
Everybody who is only seeing 2 characters in this comment is using the wrong OS ;-)
By greytux on 01.09.15 9:46am
Well everybody in that OS loves boxes.. or should I call them windows. (Don’t care about the OS’s they all have their ups and downs.)
By Dark Descent on 01.09.15 10:24am
Or just on a computer, Mac or PC, using a browser that is not Safari. (even with an emoji plugin i can’t see the last character)
By rvarg007 on 01.09.15 11:57am
So awesome…. the audience is completely gasping over scrolling up and down with the touch of a finger, the bounce back, even pinch to zoom. So crazy nobody had ever seen this before. They spent a huge amount of time justifying just removing the keyboard buttons!
By brock2621 on 01.09.15 9:54am
Exactly — the physics-correct flick-scrolling during the "visual voicemail" demo made the whole crowd gasp.
By BobS67 on 01.09.15 10:24am
And even then, journalists who were at the time working for the Engadget were all extremely skeptic on the no-keyboard thing altogether, still parading the BlackBerry as a good alternative. AH.
By Arkitekt on 01.09.15 10:47am
Anyone who believe that the original iPhone did not change the smartphone industry is idiot. You Android phone may be way more awesome… but it’s thanks to Apple. Android was a shitty Blackberry clone before the iPhone and man did every manufacturer feel like shit after that presentation!
By technofou on 01.09.15 3:39pm
Having Eric Schmidt on the board must have seemed like a good idea at the time ! And as a board member he gets one of the first iPhones … cool!
By Ducksbane on 01.10.15 7:08am
The greatest speech ever was given. No, seriously. I watch this every year with my Nexus devices and popcorn.
By 7-down on 01.09.15 11:34am
Ah to watch a master at his craft.
By QuarterSwede on 01.09.15 4:34pm
I use Android but I am really glad for the iPhone. It really pushed other companies to be challenged. Some say that Steve Jobs wasn’t very respectful but he challenged the world for something better.
By Paul Denisenko on 01.09.15 12:16pm
- TreoCentral CES Roundup, Day 1, 2007
(Sorry Dieter)
By krugler on 01.09.15 9:38am
hah, that website looks so dated
By theonlyfred on 01.09.15 9:51am
Back when Apple and Google were cool with each other. They could’ve been the ultimate dynamic duo… oh well.
By b_boogey_xl on 01.09.15 9:39am
in some ways they still are…googles services are better than ever on ios, just not as integrated as they use to be
By jnrbshp on 01.09.15 10:10am
You can thank apple’s lack of understanding the internet and being their almost exclusively as a hardware business and not a software + services business as the reason. Google wants to continue giving iOS users a silver platter but apple makes that difficult.
Apple, back before the cross licensing deal with HTC blocked the HTC EVO 4G LTE from entering the states because it didn’t have a system to pick a default app to handle actions (mail, browser, addresses) yet to this day you are still forced to handle those same actions on iOS with apple’s default apps default apps you can not disable or remove. If you have a 6+ you are forced to have garage band and iWork on your phone.
Steve said they were 7 years ahead of everyone else and that statement was so true for 7 years, but then the idea of letting Samsung and others drive down the cost of components before apple adds them to iPhones has caused apple to gain high profits off each device and caused iPhone owners to always be stuck in the past (8mp cameras, waiting for the ‘bigger’ screens, late to NFC and not fully implemented)
By nexus15 on 01.09.15 10:54am
It has nothing to do with being late, its about getting it right. Apple was late to every single market, mp3 players, tablets, smartphones, music, etc. Its about getting things right, not being first.
By IamPAYNE on 01.09.15 11:02am
Then please explain to me what is to get right with bigger screens, because Ive said they could have done it years ago, yet they waited to ‘get it right’ that’s BS its about waiting till the cost came down. There is no way it takes them that long to get it right
What is there to ‘get it right’ about NFC touch to pair with speakers? The 6 and 6 plus only have NFC for apple pay
What is there to ‘get it right’ for being late to higher mp cameras or giving people a phone with 2 day battery life? or making it waterproof or using that thicker bezel to add speakers to the front of a phone (since they cant figure out how to ‘get it right’ and do thinner bezels like LG and Motorola)
what is there to ‘get it right’ for being late to the smartwatch game and not having a round device, having it thicker than most of the existing smartwatches on the market.
The apple watch does not get it right for being late. Its late and its of lesser design and its UI is poor.
Proprietary 30pin and lightining do not get it right either.
By nexus15 on 01.09.15 11:25am
Reachability so that people don’t have to constantly go up on their screen. I use it every so often but it is useful for those with tiny hands, plus manufacutring.
With a secure chip that makes paying for things a lot easier than typical payment.
Apple gets things right for Apple. And that’s all that matters to Apple.
By Kirielson on 01.09.15 11:33am
Clearly no. The reason why it took Apple so long to built bigger screens in iPhones is the fact that they needed to ensure two things from the iPhone 4 going forward:
1. That every upcoming iPhone remained retina
2. That all existing apps stay compatible or very easy to update
When Apple went from the 3GS to the 4 they planinly doubled the screen res in both dimensions, so app wise everything stayed the same. But to go bigger from there and keep the display retina at the same time as well as easy app compatibility, they had to do quadruple up the res again, meaning 1,920 * 1,280. Keeping the PPI the same the screen would’ve grown 4 times bigger. Just hrowing it up to 4.5" would’ve boasted the PPI to 513, which display technology at the time wasn’t ready for yet, neither battery and chipset efficiency. The 4" iPhone 5 was a temporary solution to crack this issue. Adapting apps to just more height while keeping the same width wasn’t overly complicated, so they went this way for the time being. It’s no coincidence that Apple proudle announced "desktop class scaling" with iOS 8, along with the first two iPhones that break out from the former display res scheme. Implementing this scaling simply took time.
By MehMan on 01.10.15 5:52am
You’re twisting the original post ter’s comment to justify your listing of every feature that has shown up first on other brands or Apple features that you dislike. But your list does not address their main thrust, which is that Apple has proven over and over that it gets things right more than anyone else, even when they are not "first". You should not be comparing X feature from a company that Apple’s product does not have. In the context of early versions of an industry, you should be comparing iPad to Playbook, iPhone to Blackberry, iPod to Zune/Jukebox, Apple Watch to 360 or Gear. PS a round display is good for minute and hour hands, poor for text and images.
Sony has had 5 smart watches so far. I’ve lost track of Samsung but it’s even more than that. And none of them have been compelling, fashionable, or acceptable to a mainstream audience. A whole lot of good their multiple generations of half-baked products have done.
By acslater017 on 01.09.15 11:50am
The iPhone’s camera is widely acknowledged as being one of the best smartphone cameras available, despite it having fewer megapixels than the competition.
Longer battery life means a thicker battery, which in turn means a thicker and heavier phone. Some people won’t mind, some will. The reality is that no company has been able to defy physics either, so I fail to see how this is any failing on Apple’s part.
iOS devices support AirPlay, which kinda defeats the whole point of NFC, imo.
Lightning is reversible, which does make it better, IMO.
Apple is rarely first with its gestures, but they tend to come with their own twists that make them feel more refined than the rest of the competition, Imo.
By abazigal on 01.09.15 11:53am
Apple had no reason to go with bigger screens until it saw there was a distinct market demand for it. They had to put a lot of new hardware into the new phones and probably figured they’d kill two birds with one stone.
Apple already uses Bluetooth for speakers and they probably aren’t too concerned about functional redundancy for redundancy’s sake. NFC showed up for payments, and Apple put in the ground work to get banks and vendors to support it. They weren’t the first with NFC, but they did a more supported implementation than Google.
iPhones have always produced some of the best, if not the best, photos in the smart phone business. They type of camera they uses isn’t as relevant as the quality of photo they get from it, and they’ve always had really fucking good photos compared to their competition.
The battery required for 2 days would be much larger than their goal of slimness and sleekness would allow. People have been complaining about how the iPhone bezels are too large for ages. What makes your complaint more valid than theirs? And the 30 pin connector was better than the standard USB cables at the time.
Watches are round because they relied on gears and a 360 degree structure to map the time. That’s no longer a requirement for a functional watch. It’s a relic of the requirements of a past era. I doubt you have seen the watch, so how can you say how thick it is? You also haven’t used it’s UI, I suspect, so how can you judge its effectiveness?
You’ve chosen a number of factors that you place value on, and you’ve also chosen to ignore the very real motivations about why Apple is moving in a different direction than those factors. A lot of the stuff you mention wouldn’t be getting it right as a holistic device for the masses. It would be getting it right for you. There’s a difference. Don’t get wrapped up in tech specs and lose sight of the overall user experience.
By ian.ryan on 01.09.15 12:47pm
Actually you’re right about that one. Apple was late to bigger screen. Cost wasn’t the issue, though. It really was a problem of how long it took to get the iPhone out after identifying this problem which, from what I understand, was about 2 years due to what was in the pipe.
I recommend this article by Mark Rogowsky at Forbes (new as of 1/8/15) which explains this.
As a note, I think his writing (about Apple) and insight is excellent.
Apple’s Big-Screen Debut Is A Blockbuster, Cook Should Direct A Sequel
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2015/01/08/apples-big-screen-debut-is-a-blockbuster-cook-should-direct-a-sequel/
By RF9 on 01.09.15 1:41pm