The iPhone at 15

The device that changed the world

Fifteen years ago this week, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone for the first time, calling it an iPod, internet communicator and a phone in your pocket. The first iPhone was pretty basic, but it mainstreamed a new smartphone concept, one which would quickly take the market by storm and change all of us in fundamental ways.

Jobs didn't even mention the camera in that summary, but that would be a big part of the change we would later see, being able to take photos and video wherever we happened to be and share them with the world instantly. That essentially made everyone a reporter, and social networks would give us the audience.

With that first version, you just got the few apps that came with it -- the app store would come in July 2008 -- but even with just a handful of apps, it was still revolutionary.

It's something we take for granted in 2022, that we can do just about anything on our phones that once required a desktop computer to achieve along with several external devices from a music player to a camera to pager.

In fact, even though we still call it a phone, I would bet that phone calls are one of the least used functions on today's smartphones. Apps drive our usage and in 2021, 46 percent of survey respondents told Statista they used their phones an astonishing 5-6 hours per day. Another 11 percent reported using it 7 hours or more.

We can debate how healthy that is, but you can be sure even the most ardent admirers on that day 15 years ago couldn't have anticipated the full impact of that device, and how it would change society forever.

My favorite posts from the last week:

• With more data than ever, are companies making smarter decisions? (TC+)

• IBM reportedly shopping Watson Health just as healthcare gets hot

• Tupu.io wants to help women thrive in tech jobs through mentorship

• Peter Reinhardt leaves Twilio to run his carbon mitigation startup

Other things I’m reading:

• Microsoft poaches key Apple semiconductor engineer as it ramps up in-house chip design - 9to5Mac

• How Signal is playing with fire - Platformer

• Fintech Startup Checkout.com Scores $40 Billion Valuation in Latest Share Sale - WSJ

Photo credit: Carl Berkley. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license