iPhone 10th anniversary: looking back at how Apple changed the mobile landscape – The Verge

10 things the iPhone savagely destroyed in my life

2017-07-02T16:00:02-04:00

This week was the iPhone's 10th birthday, but if I'm going to be completely honest, I was one of the holdouts who didn't get one until two years ago.

For years after the iPhone was released in 2007, I was a hermit who believed that I didn't need material, worldly possessions. When my dad asked multiple times if I wanted to upgrade my dated LG VX5200 flip phone, I said no. My reasoning was that since it had a camera in it, my phone was already pretty cool.

Somehow, I survived high school and almost made it into my first year of college without any smart devices before I gave into the peer pressure and a need to actually use the internet eve …

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Car companies have learned little from smartphones

2017-06-30T07:30:02-04:00

With all this 10th anniversary talk of the iPhone going on sale, I can't help but look back at all the devices disrupted by that rectangular slab of software and silicon, with one notable exception. The list includes wristwatches and bedside alarm clocks; remote controls and light switches; point-and-shoot cameras; printed maps and calendars; and home stereos and MP3 players, including Apple's own iPod. In retrospect, the changes were as swift as they were decisive. But there's one holdout that's still ripe for disruption: cars.

The rise of the iPhone, eclipsed by an even higher summit scaled by Android, has set the baseline expectation for …

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Even Steve Jobs didn’t understand what the iPhone truly was

2017-06-29T16:29:37-04:00

The phone is dead. The iPhone killed it.

It's hard to say when exactly the inflection point came. Was there was a single point in time that the devices in our pockets became computers first and phones as a distant second? Was it the original iPhone, released 10 years ago today? Perhaps it was the iPhone 3G, which added faster internet, or the iPhone 5, which supported LTE. Or maybe it was iPhone OS 2, which opened up the App Store for developers to create their own communication platforms outside of SMS and voice calls.

The iPhone has forever changed how people communicate

Whether it was a slow transition or a single device, with the benefi …

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Creator of Apple’s smartphone keyboard reveals early iPhone prototypes

2017-06-29T14:27:30-04:00

One of the most stunning elements of the first iPhone, which turns 10 years old today, is that it jettisoned the idea of a physical keyboard in favor of a software one. The idea, in hindsight, feels like a no-brainer. But during the iPhone's development more than a decade ago, the idea of an on-screen keyboard was a radical concept that ultimately had a colossal impact on the future of software interface and smartphone design.

To commemorate the event, the creator of that software keyboard, human interface designer Ken Kocienda, posted a photo of two early iPhone prototypes he used to develop the keyboard. In a neat little tidbit of tech hi …

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The creators of the iPhone are worried we’re too addicted to technology

2017-06-29T14:24:53-04:00

The iPhone, which turns 10 years old today, is arguably one of the most transformative pieces of consumer technology ever created. It kicked off the smartphone boom by putting the first accessible and easy-to-use computer in our pockets, helped usher in entire software industries in just a few years' time, and obviated the need for scores of single-purpose gadgets, from point-and-shoot cameras to GPS units to MP3 players.

Yet for all the benefits that the iPhone helped deliver, our current level of unprecedented digital connection has left quite a few critics dismayed and concerned over our screen addiction and our inability to go even a fe …

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When the chime drops: tracking the rise of the iPhone sample in music

2017-06-29T11:51:50-04:00

About two minutes and 30 seconds into "Future," the final track on Paramore's 2013 self-titled album, you can hear it: a small chime that sounds like an iPhone notification. The same thing happens in Rihanna's "Pose" at around 1:07: the sound of an iMessage being sent. And in Childish Gambino's "Telegraph Ave" and Frank Ocean's "Start": an iMessage received.

Whether you like it or not, the iPhone's SMS bleep and jittery ringtones have become as recognizable as the MGM lion's roar or the 1-800-Mattress jingle. For Apple, these sounds are an immediate callback to the brand. For the producers who turn them into the backbone of a beat, they're …

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How the iPhone won over Japan and gave the world emoji

2026-03-29T12:52:30-04:00

It's easy to see how the iPhone changed the world 10 years ago - now pretty much every public place is packed with people peering into their palms in a way that would have been difficult to imagine before 2007. But as Steve Jobs pointed out during his famous introduction to the product, Apple was entering a market where the existing competitors weren't all that great; they were either somewhat hard to use and dumb, or hard to use and somewhat dumb.

What if Apple had entered a market with a complex, entrenched ecosystem based on advanced infrastructure and services, where devices offered an endless array of features that people actually mad …

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We’re starting to reclaim the spaces the iPhone conquered

2017-06-29T10:10:09-04:00

I like to play a game on the subway where I look around and try to find someone not on their phone. I like seeing a person reading a book, or, in an ultimate win, someone staring into space without headphones. It's a rare find.

These check-ins remind me that we, as a society, rely on our phones to distract and entertain us. Yet still, even as a hyper-aware person, I can't even force myself to get off my own iPhone while riding the train. I try, but always think of something I have to do immediately: reply to an email, respond to my friend's text, double-check a date in my calendar, read an article, adjust my music. Apparently everyone has s …

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The iPhone killed my inner nerd

2017-06-29T07:30:02-04:00

When I was a teenager, this time of year would be insufferable. My bedroom would be nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning, but it wasn't even particularly hot outside. I had at least five tower PCs running inside my bedroom, all contributing a lot of heat to my tiny little room. Each performed its own role in my home network, with a file server, domain server, Exchange server, and media center PC among them. All of those tower PCs are now inside my pocket, thanks to the iPhone.

I used to run a full Active Directory with individual organizational units and push out group policies to manage my family's local PCs. I had a proxy …

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How the iPhone changed passive-aggression

2017-06-28T15:30:38-04:00

The iPhone is 10 years old, which means, if I am being totally honest with you, that I do not remember a time in which it didn't exist. However, I do remember a time in which I didn't have one! In the summer of 2014, I moved to New York City for an internship at a now-defunct literary magazine run out of an apartment in Washington Heights, and I still had a generic, sliding camera phone. I looked up directions to any place that I needed to go on Google Maps on my laptop before I left the house and took photos of them.

To be honest, my life was fine. Who cares? If you get a little lost in New York City, whatever. It's like being in a Lorde …

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