Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the world its first look at the iPhone — as well as a glimpse into a radically different future of personal computing and communications — on this day in history, Jan. 9, 2007.
“It’s not just the bestselling gadget ever created: It’s probably the most influential one, too,” Wired wrote in a 2018 retrospective of the first decade of the iPhone.
“Its influence goes far beyond other phones — the infrastructure that made the iPhone also enabled drones, smart-home gadgets, wearables and self-driving cars.”
The iPhone offered a fingertip touch screen, a powerful camera and easy access to the internet, among many other features, providing huge advances over existing smartphones such as the Blackberry, Moto Q and Palm Treo.
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs, dressed in his signature black mock turtleneck, boasted at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
The Apple co-founder noted that the Macintosh in 1984 “changed the whole computer industry” and that the iPod (introduced on the same Jan. 9 date as the iPhone, but in 2001) “changed the entire music industry.”