Revolutionary to Ordinary: Upgrading to a new iPhone
The revolutionary device in 2007 feels normal in 2020
Few moments have truly blown my mind, the first time I held an iPhone was certainly one of them. It’s probably hard for anyone under around 25 to appreciate how revolutionary it was. We all went from hunks of plastic that flipped open to a slick glass and aluminum rectangle, it would become the center of our lives. This week I’ll be upgrading to a new iPhone 12 Pro Max, which will be my fourth iPhone (I took a five year break to join Team Android), and while I’m excited, it will never be like the first.
I was a sophomore in high school in January 2007 when I raced home from school to see Steve Job’s recorded iPhone unveil event. This was before live streaming on YouTube, you had to actually go into iTunes and download the recording. In 2007 you could still control leaks, so while we knew some kind of phone was coming, we really had no idea what it would look like or was actually capable of. I really had no idea what to expect, I must have imagined some kind of iPod with number keys.
It’s been written about enough by now, but nobody could get on stage and sell a product like Steve Jobs. The image of Jobs in his black turtleneck, blue jeans, and white sneakers is iconic. He struts around stage in total control of the room. The conference may have blown my mind more than the actual phone did Jobs began by saying that Apple has three devices to announce today…
An iPod with touch controls
A phone
An internet communicator
He repeats himself
An iPod with touch controls
A phone
An internet communicator
The crowd noise grows…they know where this is going.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I joined the crowd in cheering from the family computer in my parent’s basement.
Jobs gave me an appreciation for public speaking skills that have influenced me ever since. He didn’t need to use graphs or technical specifications to sell the iPhone. All he had to do was show a slide of what smartphones before iPhone looked like, and then he pulled the iPhone out of his pocket. He could have ended it there. He spoke in such colorful language, the revolutionary multi-touch “worked like magic”. This wasn’t a phone for tech nerds, it was cool.
I was 16 when the first iPhone was released in the summer of 2007. It was $600, and you needed a mandatory $30/month data plan. I had to pass. I was dying to be part of the first generation, but making $8 an hour for a few hours a week at my summer job just wasn’t going to cut it. I could have made it work, but perhaps this was my first adult realization that the material item isn’t always necessary. That summer I saved and saved. Summer of 2008 came and so did the second iPhone, the iPhone 3G. Nothing was stopping me this time. For one, it was now carrier subsidized, so you could get it starting at $200, and two, I had saved up at least a year’s run-rate worth of data plan payments. It was mine. Looking back, I’m not sure if I was more excited by the actual phone, or the fact that I had worked my way towards a shiny revolutionary toy I could show off.
The iPhone changed the world, we walk around every day with a super computer in our pocket. We have the ability to press our finger against a piece of glass and in a few seconds see the live face of a loved one. As I’m sure happened with the car, or the microwave, smartphones became just tools we all use. The novelty of this incredible piece of technology has faded for many, they now feel iterative and instead of revolutionary. To me this is the lasting legacy of Apple and Job’s 2007 event, they took something so extraordinary and brought it to everyone. They were able to make such revolutionary technology feel normal.
I still can’t wait to get my new phone, but it’s just a new version, a refreshed model for 2020. No matter how fast it is or how great the pictures are, it will never compare to the first time I picked up my iPhone 3G in the summer of 2008. I’ll play with the new phone for an hour and maybe take some pictures, but then I’ll slide it into my pocket and go about my day.