It was January 9, 2007 when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in the world, with the goal of “Reinvent the phone”: goal achieved.
Today it is capable of amazing photographs from optics, to manage high-end graphics and even talk and communicate with its owner. But as it was in its infancy iPhone, the most popular smartphones of all time today taking five years: it was, on 9 January 2007 when Steve Jobs introduced it to the whole world.
In the frame of classic Apple events, that the annual MacWorld conference, Steve Jobs has set a goal certainly ambitious: “Reinvent the phone”. With hindsight, one can hardly say that there will be a success.
Jobs had thoroughly analyzed the mobile telephony market before leap in headfirst with his Apple. In his opinion, the simple mobile phones were too unintelligent for the common people, while smartphones looked like anything but simple to use. So, he decided to give the world a device that was smart and simple at the same time, disrupting the entire market.
Looking back, the first iPhone now looks like a real antique, a product almost laughable for the few available functions. It was, in fact, only a 2G terminal, with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, 2 megapixel camera, capacitive screen and enough memory 4 and 8 GB (16 GB version was introduced a few months later). But in its simplicity, then revolutionary, introducing two concepts, then abused by the competition, that of multi-touch interactivity and seamless integration with the operating system.
iPhone is the first device to make available to the general public with a touch compatible with the touch of multiple fingers simultaneously, introducing the concepts of tap, scrolling with inertia and, last but not least, the almost complete elimination of any physical key. Before the iPhone, in fact, almost all of the resistive touchscreen was often very slow in responding and hard to use. iPhone disrupts technology, making it solid and responsive, quick and agile.
iPhone is also one of the first smartphones fully integrated with the operating systems on desktop. Its sign, the iPhone OS renamed in the summer of 2010 as iOS, it seemed, in fact, a miniature version of Mac OS X and, last but not least, was fully integrated with iTunes. Transfer music, contacts, documents appeared immediately as connecting the device to the computer, without the need for complicated software, drivers and untraceable exotic settings.
Not many functions, when compared to today: there was a calendar, a notepad, weather, stocks trading, the legacy of the iPod and little else. App Store, the most popular application store in the world was presented only a year later. Five years later, however, the 2012 CES is fully dedicated to the mobile, totally inspired by what happened later by the introduction of the iPhone: a recognition in many ways, which comes a few months after the departure of Steve Jobs and the same day in which the industry is watching the event in Las Vegas.
Today, iPhone is undoubtedly an object of worship as well as a tool for communication, it is easy to say how Steve Jobs is very successful in his attempt to reinvent the phone, dramatically changing the industry sector, fueling creativity competitors and providing lifeline to what was to become a sworn enemy, Android. Although the prototype of Google’s mobile operating system was the same before the iPhone, the iPhone is with changing bill: first, in fact, resembled much more to what eventually became the centerpiece of WebOS and even Blackberry.
The friction between Jobs and Eric Schmidt, the war between the two platforms and the explosion of the mobile market are history, a story that began from January 9, 2007.