As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the iPhone this week, we remember the phone that changed the shape of the mobile industry forever. Apple[1] has long endured a global fan following as well as a lot of hate for a lot of reasons. But despite the polarising emotions, one cannot argue that the Cupertino giant created something special with the first iPhone. While there are those who have been religiously buying each successive iPhone[2] right from the start, other may have only recently accepted Apple's ecosystem, and still others want nothing to do with it.
But on the iPhone's tenth anniversary, we go down memory lane and take a look at some interesting stories that surrounded the first iPhone.
The birth of multitouch and a new addiction
The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone but it wasn't intended to be. The iPhone was actually envisioned to be a portable computer with touchscreen capabilities. But the touchscreen did more than make life easier, it made it too distracting as well. A group of Apple's original creators came together for a discussion[3] at design studio IDEO's Palo Alto headquarters on Wednesday.
The Apple engineers were asked about the positive and negative impacts of the smartphone boom, which the iPhone championed. Most of the groups generally reached the conclusion that the smartphone is a distraction and one that people find difficult to unplug from.
"I think it's a combination of factors." early Apple iOS designer Greg Christie said. "The fact that it is so portable so it's always with you, it's radically easy to use compared with previous digital technology products, and it provides so much for you that the addiction actually, in retrospect, is not surprising."...