Thirteen years ago today, on January 9, 2007, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone, the “computer for the rest of us.”
Jobs introduced the device as if it were three separate products, a mobile phone, an iPod with a touch interface, and an internet communications device. Thirteen years later, the iPhone is all three of those things, yet so much more.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an Android user who wouldn’t use an iPhone if your life depended on it, you still benefit from the iPhone. When Google’s Android development team saw the iPhone, they realized their development was headed in the wrong direction.
Original Android prototypes used a smaller screen, with a physical keyboard, much like early BlackBerry devices. Android devices eventually sported a much more iPhone-like interface. There was enough of a similarity that Apple and Samsung spent years battling over it in court.
Apple has sold well over a billion iPhones since 2007, and as of early 2019, the company had an active installed base of 1.4 billion devices.
The design of the iPhone, and its many features, have evolved over the years to become the triple-camera-lensed, OLED screen device we hold today. Who knows what the iPhone will look like thirteen years from now, or will the iPhone be replaced by another device, from Apple or who knows where?
Happy Thirteenth Birthday iPhone, you’re looking good, and behaving amazingly well for a teenager. Here’s to many more birthdays!
