It’s 10 years since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone.
Jobs, dressed in trademark jeans and black turtleneck, described the iPhone as a “revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.”
That was on January 9, 2007.
When the iPhone went on sale six months later, customers flocked to Apple stores across the United States to be one of the first to own one.
The iPhone caused such a stir that it was dubbed the Jesus phone by some sections of the media. A survey indicated six out of 10 Americans were aware of its release and Time Magazine declared it “Invention of the Year” for 2007.
Jobs is of course is no longer with us, having succumbed to cancer in 2011 and the iPhone is no longer the best selling phone in the world, thanks to the rise and rise of Samsung.
But it helped turn Apple, which Jobs co-founded with his mate Stephen Wozniak in 1976, into one of the world’s biggest companies.
By 2012, five years after the iPhone’s debut, more than 200 million units had been sold.
But, according to Wozniak, Jobs was just the front man. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design.
The claim is supported by Daniel Kottke, one of Apple’s earliest employees and a college friend of Jobs.
“Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person,” he said.