Steve Jobs held up a black slab with no keyboard and declared Apple was reinventing the phone. The device fused a widescreen iPod, a mobile phone, and an internet browser with a multi-touch screen. Skeptics doubted a touchscreen without a stylus, but the iPhone, released six months later, would upend the mobile industry and reshape how billions interact with computers.
Jobs had rehearsed the demo dozens of times, terrified that the finicky prototype would crash mid-presentation; engineers had built a 'golden path' through the software, forcing Jobs to perform tasks in a precise, memorized sequence to avoid triggering bugs. He walked the crowd through making a call, texting, browsing a real website, and playing a Bob Dylan song, drawing gasps and laughter with each new trick.
The name itself was contested internally until the final weeks. Cingular Wireless, the exclusive carrier, had signed on partly out of desperation to differentiate itself, agreeing to Apple's unprecedented demand for revenue sharing and design control. Nokia and BlackBerry executives who watched clips of the keynote reportedly weren't alarmed at first, dismissing the high price and lack of a physical keyboard.
Within a decade, the iPhone would become the most profitable consumer product in history, spawning an entire app economy and pushing global smartphone adoption past two billion users. Jobs closed the keynote with a quiet flourish, referencing a 1984 quote about wanting to 'put a ding in the universe' — a claim that, this time, proved literal.
Key people: Steve Jobs