I have been reading all of the annual anniversary articles about the iPhone keynote 7 years ago. Every once in awhile I like to go back and watch the keynote over because I believe it was the best technology keynote ever delivered, Steve Jobs at his absolute best.
One thing has always struck me when Steve goes into the three revolutionary products part of the presentation. There was a widescreen iPod, a phone and a revolutionary internet communicator. What strikes me is the audience reaction to all three. The first two get very loud applause, while the third, the internet communicator, gets no applause, well a cursory clap I would say.
Why this is interesting is that 7 years later, it is the internet communicator that has been the most important one of the three. Very few people in the audience appreciated what was being introduced. In 7 years the constant communication with the internet has been the killer app.
It took the creation of the app store and third-party apps to really take full advantage of the internet communicator, but it has revolutionized our lives. I cannot remember how bad phones were before the iPhone. I had Palm Treo's, Windows Mobile and Blackberry's before I bought the first iPhone and they were all very limiting. They all fetched email (the Blackberry pushed), made calls and were decent for SMS.
There was something different when going to the internet with the iPhone. It was night and day. Also, the maps were incredible, they still are. But behind all of the data on the maps were communication to the internet. That app showed just what was possible when you could have a revolutionary internet communicator going along with a rich client application on a mobile device. Most apps that have come since have used this same model to create amazing mobile applications that the web alone cannot replicate. The brilliance of Steve Jobs was seeing the future and by announcing this functionality as he did, instead of something like an enhanced web experience, shows that he knew what the iPhone was all about. Hats off Mr. Jobs.