Today Apple is introducing their 10th anniversary iPhone along with other new products and upgrades. Here’s what I had to say ten years ago when Apple announced the iPhone. How’s it hold up? (For the record, it took me almost 5 years for me to actually get an iPhone. But this was more an issue of waiting for Verizon to get the iPhone than anything else. I currently had an iPhone SE, which has relatively modern guts but the same form as the iPhone 5.)
Also, this original post is 10 years old; no idea how many of the links still work.
The original iPhone from 10 years ago.
Apple announced it’s new iPhone on Wednesday, and in typical Apple fashion it is absolutely too cool for words. As the NYT’s David Pogue puts it, the iPhone is “not so much a smartphone as something out of Minority Report.”
In typical Apple fashion, the iPhone is already becoming a pop culture icon, just the way the iMac and iPod did before it.
In typical Apple fashion, the iPhone is redefining what we think a cell phone should be able to do. It’s not enough for it to have a lame “mobile” browser. It’s got to have a fully functional standard browser. It’s not enough for it to have voice mail, it’s got to have a voice mail system that looks just like E-mail. It’s not enough to be able to show movies, it’s got to have widescreen video. It needs to be smart enough to turn off the power hungry screen when you put it up to your face to talk.
In typical Apple fashion, it’s somewhat ahead of its time (and I don’t mean this in a good way), so everyone who doesn’t have to instantly have one would do well to wait for the second generation.
In typical Apple fashion, it has a my-way-or-the-highway idiosyncratic interface that says however Steve Jobs think you should use it is the only way you should use it because he’s cooler than you are.
In typical Apple fashion, the company neglected to clear all its trademark issues in advance, but instead just assumes that “Hey, we’re Apple, and we’ll clear up all our problems because we’re too cool not to have what we want.”
In short, it is a typical, mind blowing, infuriating Apple product. I’m glad I’ve got a new PDA that I won’t be ready to replace for a couple of years, which gives the technology the time to catch up to Apple’s brilliant vision.
BTW, Apple is no longer Apple Computer. Just Apple.
And here’s a followup post from the next day with some reader reaction to the item.
So what do you think about this, or the iPhone in general ten years later? Post it in the comments!