There's no words to describe how mind blowing the iPhone was!
I remember when it was just a rumor that they were working on a smartphone and everyone wanted to know what it would even look like.
I would check this site for any news or to see if I could finally get a peek at the iPhone but the closest we got were just mockups.
The mockups got pretty ridiculous by the way with everyone thinking that it would likely look like an iPod but with a numpad as well.
Which is actually understandable since Apple had already done that, sort of... with the Motorola Rokr.
So finally after watching this site for months, it was announced that there would be a keynote and Apple would show off the iPhone.
So I started counting down the days and then it happened.
Steve stepped out on stage and showed us something totally different, a solid brick-style phone with nothing but a touchscreen and a single button on the front.
Mindblown!
After the keynote I remember iPhone was all over the news, even on local news stations.
Someone from Apple was even
doing demonstrations with the iPhone for the news cameras and I kid you not, they would just show off how you can touch an app and it opens, click the home button to close it and would show off how you can just swipe your finger up and down to scroll and yet peoples minds were still blown!
It sounds silly now but at the time nobody had seen anything like it.
After it went on sale my father bought one and originally you had to plug it into your computer and activate it with iTunes. So he plugged it in & waited. It took about 4 days to finally activate because so many people were trying to activate their iPhones all at once and the whole time he had to just leave it plugged in. I think he had to borrow my Moms phone for work since his old one was deactivated.
Finally, it activated just in time because we went to Walt Disney World a week or less later.
You should have seen the attention we got from everyone!
We were strolling around WDW and this was only about a week and a half after the iPhone was released so were were one of the only people with an iPhone and every time he pulled it out people would hover around us just to see him use it.
We would take pictures with it and people were amazed at the camera, the touchscreen, that old animation it used to do when taking a photo, zooming in and out on photos, etc..
There was an even incident when my father and I were in line for the Test Track ride and he pulled it out just to let my mother know how much longer the line was and all of a sudden a group of about 8 Japanese high school kids around my age came rushing over and literally stood in a circle in front of us. They didn't really say anything to us or even look at our faces haha, they were just looking down in awe at the iPhone my father was holding and he showed them how opening/closing apps looked, let them pinch on photos, just basic stuff like that, yet they oohed and ahhed at everything he did with it.
It's been 10 years now and it truly has changed the world!
Sure, there have been countless knockoffs since then and of course android itself is just a ripoff of iOS, but nobody has had the impact that iPhone had and continues to have.
R.I.P. Steve Jobs and thank you for using your vision to change the world.
Here's to another 10 years of iPhone.
