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Seven Years Ago Today, Steve Jobs Introduced the iPhone

YMark said:
Exaggerate much? It was a phone (that was "re-invented"), not a vaccine.
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Unless you are talking about a hypothetical vaccine that cures the big C, I'd say the iPhone had a bigger impact on the world than a vaccine.
 
iBug2 said:
We as in we in this forum, which is a computer related forum. None of the people posting here are the kind you describe.

Not to mention, those users who aren't like us, they are the majority, and there's nothing wrong with that. People shouldn't waste time trying to optimise their computer related workflows by learning irrelevant stuff like how things work underneath. They should spend their time to do their work. The computer should be invisible, a very easy to use tool. That's how computers drive progress. Not by being complicated, but by being easy.
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I agree with you. A computer should work as a washing machine for the user who wants an easy-to-use tool for his/her professional and personal stuff. I just tried to put in perspective all the exaltation over the original iPhone. To me, there were better options at that time, but I agree that iPhone was a beautifully made phone very capable for a lot of users. But Nokia and Blackberry were still very popular at that time and maybe a lot of brainwash driven by the press was needed to convince worldwide users that they couldn't be happy without a touchscreen.

Even today, iPhone isn't the best seller worldwide, probably Samsung is the top seller and even Nokia still sells good on its not-so-smart line. The merit of iPhone, I guess, is convincing everyone that "without a good touchscreen user experience, you won't be happy" so all the competitors began producing touchscreen phones and this gave Apple a big competitive advantage.

I think the most exciting phones today are the Galaxy Note III and S4. Both have very good cameras, and the user has a great tweaking control if he/she wants. Of course, it's my personal opinion. I hate Samsung laptops though. No way they'll reach the elegance of a Mac trackpad or doing well on the reliability side...
 
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brdeveloper said:
To me, there were better options at that time, but I agree that iPhone was a beautifully made phone very capable for a lot of users. But Nokia and Blackberry were still very popular at that time and maybe a lot of brainwash driven by the press was needed to convince worldwide users that they couldn't be happy without a touchscreen.
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It wasn't about the touch screen. I bought my first "smartphone" one year before the iPhone introduction. It was a Motorola, can't remember the model name really. And it took me an hour to find how to set up the date. And I'm an experienced computer user. That's how bad phones were before the iPhone.

No brainwash was needed. iPhone was the first smartphone that was "usable". Not just for the everyday man, but for people like me too.

brdeveloper said:
Even today, iPhone isn't the best seller worldwide, probably Samsung is the top seller and even Nokia still sells good on its not-so-smart line. The merit of iPhone, I guess, is convincing everyone that "without a good touchscreen user experience, you won't be happy" so all the competitors began producing touchscreen phones and this gave Apple a big competitive advantage.
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The merit of the iPhone is being usable. It sells because you can buy it and start using it. Everyone can, even my mother could. And yes, it's not the only smartphone that is usable right now, but it was the only one in 2007. Everyone else caught up pretty quickly, as expected.

brdeveloper said:
I think the most exciting phones today are the Galaxy Note III and S4. Both have very good cameras, and the user has a great tweaking control if he/she wants. Of course, it's my personal opinion. I hate Samsung laptops though. No way they'll reach the elegance of a Mac trackpad or on the reliability side...
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It's really irrelevant to the discussion which phones today are the best. Even if some intergalactic jury decides the S4 to be the best phone today, it doesn't change the fact that it all started in January 2007.
 
I remember wanting the Moto Q before I saw this keynote. People laughed at the time, but 99% of the phones on the market today wouldn't be around without the iPhone. It really was way ahead of the curve.
 
Before and after:

beforeandafteriphone.jpg
 
iBug2 said:
It's really irrelevant to the discussion which phones today are the best. Even if some intergalactic jury decides the Samsung to be the best phone today, it doesn't change the fact that it all started in January 2007.
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And what about if Apple launches a 5" iPhone? Isn't it started with Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note?
 
chr1s60 said:
I remember wanting the Moto Q before I saw this keynote. People laughed at the time, but 99% of the phones on the market today wouldn't be around without the iPhone. It really was way ahead of the curve.
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But Steve was lying about one thing. He said that the software was 5 years ahead of the competition. It wasn't. It was 4 years ahead only. :)
 
YMark said:
Exaggerate much? It was a phone (that was "re-invented"), not a vaccine.
Click to expand...

While it didn't save lives like a vaccine for cancer or HIV would, it certainly changed the world. Just have a look around you and try & imagine things had there been no iphone. We'd probably still be using blackberry-esque or touchscreen phones with stylus (trying, rather failing, to replicate PC/mouse experience) and tablets still would have been a failed Bill Gates dream. Only practical way of computing and getting online would have been PCs and Laptops.

Two year olds visiting me for the first time know how to use my ipad and android phone. Think that'd be the case with blackberrying and laptops?
 
brdeveloper said:
And what about if Apple launches a 5" iPhone? Isn't it started with Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note?
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It started with someone named Pythagoras, who discovered that one can draw a rectangle with the diagonal of X meters and a fixed ratio of length / width.
 
brdeveloper said:
And what about if Apple launches a 5" iPhone? Isn't it started with Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note?
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Ofcourse! No one in the world, not even apple, could imagine a touchscreen phone bigger than 3.5". Don't think anyone even knew screens can be made THAT big. Adding a bigger screen is so so so much more of an innovation than the OG iphone, it's not even funny! Apple should, rather MUST pay royalties to samsung if they ever release a 5" phone! After all, it's because of S4 and Note we have a brand new saying known as "Bigger is Better" (most of the times).
 
Sell Dreams, Not Products

Steve Jobs doesn’t sell computers. He sells the promise of a better world. True evangelists are driven by a messianic zeal to create new experiences. When Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he said, "In our own small way, we’re going to make the world a better place." Where most people see the iPod as a music player, Jobs presents it as tool to enrich people’s lives. Of course, it’s important to have great products. But passion, enthusiasm, and a sense of purpose beyond the actual product will set you and your company apart.

Source: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/09/0929_jobs_presentations/4.htm
 
kobalap said:
The thing is, half of the windbags posting about Apple doing "nothing" since 2007 couldn't explain to you what they would consider a game changer.

I recently saw a presentation by Guy Kawasaki - a former Apple employee, among other things. He was talking about the 10% improvement vs. the 10x improvement. His presentation somehow reminds me of what many of the copycat companies do vs. what Apple does.

The example Mr. Kawasaki gave was related to ice. Back in the day, ice was harvested from frozen fresh water sources such as ponds and streams. People would go out to the pond and cut ice blocks. These ice blocks would then be shipped to wherever they would be consumed. Of course, the industry was quite limited - the ice could only be harvested when the water sources were frozen and the harvested ice could only be shipped so far.

Many companies harvested ice - some would find ways to improve the process by 5% or 10% or whatever. But in general, things were the same.... until someone figured out how to make ice in a factory. By creating an artificial environment and freezing water in a factory, the ice industry was revolutionized. Ice could be made any time of the year and pretty much anywhere in the planet. These big block of ice were made in factories and were shipped to local consumers. This change was a 10x improvement over the process that was in place before.

Some companies were able to find ways to improve the process by 5 or 10% or whatever. But in general, things were the same... until, someone figured out how to make ice in appliances that would fit in restaurant kitchen or even a home kitchen. This change was a 10x improvement over the process that was in place before.

If you look at what the iPhone did for the cell phones, it was not a 10% improvement over what was in place before. It was a 3x or a 5x or even a 10x improvement over what was there before. If you look at what iPad did for tablets, same thing. I mean, was there even a separate market segment for tablets before the iPad came out? The iPad was so good that it ushered in the post PC era. And now, the only growth in PCs is tablets.

Of course, there are lots of copy cats around. What with Samsung and LG and so on. They introduce all kinds of features that for some represent that 5% or 10% improvement over what you find in Apple's products. And those who don't have an appreciation of how hard it is to come up with a 10x improvement will tout the Samsungs and the LGs as some revolutionary products full of all kinds of innovation. And the iPad is nothing more than an oversized iPod.

To me, its just because some people don't know the difference between what is 10% better vs. what is 10x better.
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Brilliant read. Thank you :)
 
Thinking.....

At the time it seemed very polished and like it was out of the future.

Thinking weirdly, imagine if they'd somehow smuggled an iPhone5S via their time machine to that keynote. Peoples heads might have exploded more than they already did.
 
As a truly.....

Jobs-esque and succesful product, the iPhone become the standard against another makers pitch their strategies and products. Also become the flagship of the new cash flow in Apple. I dont know for sure, but I think the iPhone helps to drive sales of Mac hardware away from PC makers.

A sucess, no doubt....!.....:D


:):apple:
 
Still have my 2g:)) its so beautiful. I made the mistake few years back to upgrade to 3.1.3. I wish there was a way to get it back down to iPhone OS 1 :(((
 
7 years ago Apple redefined what a handheld phone should be.

7 minutes later Eric ScHmIdT steals the iOS white papers.
 
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