iPhone turns eight years old

It was eight years ago, on Friday, when Steve
Jobsunveiled the first ever iPhone at the 2007
MacWorld conference. Thus ending years of
speculation regarding whether or not Apple was
working on a mobile phone.
Given how ubiquitous the handsets have become
in the years since (the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sold
upwards of 10 million handsets in their first
weekend alone), it’s easy to forget just how
revolutionary the device was upon its launch,
popularizing capacitive touch screens and multi-
touch gestures.
“As soon as I
swiped the screen for the first time, I knew a
radical shift in technology had taken place,” says
an Apple employee, who joined the company
shortly before the phone’s release.
Like any truly great technology, the iPhone’s
impact wasn’t just technical, however. The iPhone
changed our idea about what a smartphone should
be: carry out some computing functions, to a
portable computer that also makes phone calls. It
transformed the world of easy mobile Internet
search, which in turn set companies like Facebook
on the road to being “mobile first” businesses.
The iPhone also democratized the world of
software development with the arrival of the iOS
App Store, which has since paid out more than $
25 billion to app-makers.
Not everyone was initially a fan, of course. “Apple
should pull the plug on the iPhone,” wrote
MarketWatch’s John C. Dvorak in 2007, joining a
long line of doubters about new Apple products.