One Phone to Rule Them All

by Anthony Cole • 07/05/2007 at 10:12 PM

Changing the world isn’t something to talk about, it’s something to do. Apple, Inc. knows that very well. Apple’s done a great amount more than most other companies have in 100 years. And on this past Friday, they did it again and released a third revolutionary product into the market: the iPhone.’, ’xhtml’, ’Changing the world isn’t something to talk about, it’s something to do. Apple, Inc. knows that very well. In 31 years, they have changed the world, as well as the path of computer history. In 1976, they release the first real personal computer. In 1984, they released the world’s first successful computer with a graphical user interface. In October of 2001, they released the iPod, which changed the face of the music industry forever. Apple’s done a great amount more than most other companies have in 100 years. And on this past Friday, they did it again and released a third revolutionary product into the market: the iPhone.
There have been rumors swirling around about the iPhone for a while now. Apple has owned iphone.org since December of 1999. MacRumors first posted an iPhone rumor in August 2002, almost five years prior to the iPhone release. It really started with the news that Apple had teamed up with Motorola to do a phone, eventually released on September 7, 2005 as the Motorola ROKR. But there was “one more thing:” the iPod Nano. Apple took the excitement of the ROKR away from Motorola with the Nano. Motorola’s CEO Ed Zander’s response to the media was, “screw the nano.”
The ROKR was an utter failure in Apple’s eye. Not only did it have a low song capacity, but the phone itself was just crap. It was made out of cheap plastic and didn’t really have the Apple feel to it. They had to have realized that a few months beforehand and started on their own phone. Apple wanted to jump the middleman. The iPod Nano release seems like it was a way to get back at Motorola and make up for what would have been a disaster of a release.
When rumors started flying, things went nuts. The “blogosphere&#8221 and the rest of the internet went crazy. At first, it was thought to be a full-screen iPod, and then things just went all over the place. Then on January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs walked up onto the stage and did his magic.
Since December of 2006, there have been a total of 150 articles on the AP Wire about the iPhone. A total of 34 of those were published in the week preceding the launch. Here’s a little math for you: subtract the 34 articles, and you’ve got a total of 116 stories on the wire. Divide that by the five months, and you’ve got a total of 24 articles a month. That means that the week preceding the iPhone launch, there were 47.8% more than the monthly average of articles.
We all remember what happened next. There are approximately 184 million results for “iPhone” on Google. There are 224,022 results on Technorati for “iPhone”. When Engadget reported a (false) delay on the iPhone, Apple’s stock plunged 2.2%. Then there was WWDC, where we found out that there wasn’t going to be an iPhone SDK, and Apple’s stock continued to drop.
Fast-forward a few months to June 29th, when I had the privilege of being at the Palo Alto Apple Store for the iPhone release. I got there at around 2 PM, and it was absolutely nuts. There were estimates of around 300 people there, but I thought it looked more like 4 or 5 hundred. Just as I got there, they put the black veil over the windows. There were news crews everywhere, and people continued to line up.
The launch went better than I had expected. At around 5:40, people just started filling in the street, almost stopping traffic. The doors opened at 6, and it was pretty organized. The security guards really did their jobs well, and the line was gone in about an hour or so. Some “punk” tried to cut into the first ten, but was quickly ousted by security and the first few who were there.
I ditched the crowd afterwards and went home. It was still a bit crowded for my liking, and I wasn’t set on buying one. At around 11:30 PM that evening, I decided to take the plunge and found myself inside the Apple store a few minutes later. It was still crowded, but they had it set up really nicely. I just bought my iPhone and left; it was hassle-free.
The iPhone was really worth the wait. Hands down, it’s the best phone to ever hit the market. But how has it held up now that it’s been with an active teenager for a week? Stay tuned for part two of the series to find out.
Update: As one of our readers pointed out, it was iPhone.org, not iPhone.com, which was acquired last week.