10 Years Ago Today, the Original iPhone Officially Launched

[brianvictor7]

Why wait 3 days?

Why wait 3 days?

Just happened to be 3 days between the civil ceremony and the religious one.

 

[sidewinder3000]

Yes, I do know that. I obviously meant "two versions" as in two completely different types of software.
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I understand perfectly... you seem to have this ridiculous definition of what constitutes a smartphone, and then you say I don't understand like it somehow makes it true. Nobody is arguing that the iPhone wasn't a "seismic change". But multitouch and hardware that is driven almost completely by software doesn't make a smartphone. Having a keyboard and no multitouch doesn't make it a feature phone.

The iPhone was certainly a new phase of smartphones. Again, nobody is saying otherwise. But when you have a phone with user-installable apps and a web browser... I'm sorry, but that's a smartphone. It doesn't make it a good one or a modern one, but it's a smart phone.

We obviously don't agree on this, so there's no need for me to reply again. But don't call me snippy when you're sitting here talking down to people like I'm too stupid to understand you're insane definition of a smartphone.

The original poster wrote:
"10 years ago, no one had a smart phone. Now, most people in many countries do. Pretty amazing! Truly a life-changing event, all things considered."

You then got extremely literal and pointed out that technically, a few nerds and early adopters had a piece of crashware back then that, by virtue of some bulleted list of features, fit some early definition of a smartphone. NEWS FLASH: "no one" doesn't always literally mean no one. It sometimes just means "barely anybody". It's called hyperbole. Don't ask me why, that's just how earthlings talk now & then.

I responded that I owned every model of the Treo they made, and that while I loved them at the time they were crap, and not very smart: "They were primitive ancestors, just like cromagnon was to mankind, but they were not smartphones any more than cromag was human. iPhone was the first real smartphone."

I think that simile says it all. Was Cro-Magnon man humanoid? Certainly. Was it human? Eh. Not really. You can parse words if that's what you're into, but doing so fails to acknowledge the larger truth. Anything before the iPhone wasn't really what we define as a modern smartphone. The iPhone was and is the quintessential smart phone because that concept/design is what has become archetypal for the category. The concept that all the billions of Androids and iPhones out there today directly trace their lineage back to.

If you think that anyone here is arguing that there were LITERALLY no phones available before the iPhone that people called "smart" then you are mistaken, and arguing with shadows. All most of us are saying is that the iPhone was the first phone to truly deserve the moniker. And that it was such an order of magnitude better than anything before it, it was as if it were the first of its kind.

 

[wesgir]

That's not true. I had a Palm Treo. There were even two versions, one that ran Palm OS and another that ran Windows Mobile. I had the Palm OS version, and it sucked ass. But it was a smart phone.

Yeah! I also had Palm Trēo, but the Windows version. It was awesome. I remember not getting the first iPhone (despite thinking it was awesome) because it didn't have 3G and Wi-Fi back then wasn't all that great. I was usually at home and Wi-Fi hotspots weren't as prevalent outside the cities. The Trēo was a decent phone, but the iPhone was a game changer. I ended up getting the iPhone 3G the next year, I've had every iPhone since. It's fun to see how it's influenced much of the tech around us.
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The original poster should have said that 99% of normal, regular people didn't have personal smart phones before the iPhone. That is true. Now, practically everyone has personal smart phones.

Lot's of regular people had them too. The Blackberry Pearl and the Palm Trēo we're very popular.

 

[Clix Pix]

What a difference ten years makes.....

First-Generation iPhone (2007) with iPhone X (2017), photographed by iPhone 7 Plus:

 

[AFEPPL]

10 years and they look pretty much the same - what a waste....

 

[DNichter]

What a difference ten years makes.....

First-Generation iPhone (2007) with iPhone X (2017), photographed by iPhone 7 Plus:

Awesome! Crazy to think how much has changed since then. I remember saving up to buy the original. I knew how big of an impact it would make.