• A. 2005
  • B. 2007
  • C. 2009
  • D. 2010

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Think about the middle of the first decade of this century. Steve Jobs stood on stage and said something along the lines of: “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” Quite a statement.

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The answer is B. 2007.

The very first iPhone rolled into stores on June 29, 2007 (in America that is, we had to wait a bit longer). Steve Jobs had presented it a few months earlier, on January 9, 2007, during the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. What made that thing so special? It combined three things you normally carried separately in your bag: a mobile phone, an iPod with touchscreen, and an internet communicator. The starting price? $499 for 4GB or $599 for 8GB. That was pretty pricey at the time, but people still lined up for it.

Why the other answers are wrong:

2005 is too early. Apple was still in the middle of development then. The project was internally called “Project Purple” and was still top secret. Most people had no clue what was coming.

2009 - that’s the year of the iPhone 3GS. Already the third generation, faster, better camera, those kinds of improvements. But definitely not the first one.

2010 brought us the iPhone 4. You know, that model with the completely new design, all glass, and that “Retina Display” everyone was talking about. A major upgrade, but number four in the lineup.

📚 More background information

The iPhone launch in 2007 was really one of those “the world is different after this” moments. It changed not only how we make calls, but actually how we interact with technology altogether.

Touchscreen? Really?

Seriously, almost nobody trusted it at first. Most smartphones back then had a stylus (that little pen thing) or a physical keyboard. BlackBerry was king. Apple said: “Nah, just use your fingers” and everyone thought it would never work. That 3.5-inch screen could recognize multiple touches at once - you could make things bigger by pinching with two fingers. Sounds totally normal now, but back then? Mind blowing. Within a few years, everyone was copying it.

The App Store actually came later

Funny detail: the first iPhone didn’t have an App Store at all. That only came a year later, in July 2008. Apple didn’t even realize at first how big that would become. Now there are more than 2 million apps in it, and a lot of people make their living creating apps. Pretty big deal.

The competition didn’t know what hit them

Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola - those companies were the bosses in phone land back then. And then Apple suddenly showed up with this thing. Google launched Android in response within two years, but many of those old big names? You don’t see them anymore. They just reacted too slowly. BlackBerry thought business users would always want a physical keyboard. Whoops.

And in the Netherlands?

We had to wait a bit. The iPhone only arrived here on March 9, 2008, about nine months after America. T-Mobile had it exclusively, and yes indeed, people lined up here too. It cost €399 if you took a two-year contract. I know people who specifically took time off to get it on day one.

Realize: all those separate devices you had

For younger people it might be hard to imagine, but in 2007 you really had all these separate things. An iPod for music, a TomTom for navigation, a digital camera for photos, and your laptop to browse the internet. The iPhone did all of that at once. Okay, not perfectly - that first camera was only 2 megapixels and you couldn’t even record video with it - but still. Everything in one thing that fit in your pocket.

Steve Jobs said during the presentation: “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” He was right. The iPhone really changed everything - how we work, communicate, watch entertainment, even how we look at the world around us.

Things that were missing (yes, really)

That very first iPhone? No 3G. No copy-paste (that only came later, believe it or not). And as mentioned, you couldn’t install apps on it. The camera was terrible and recording video wasn’t possible. But it still felt futuristic. People who held it for the first time were just impressed. It was really a “wow” moment, despite all the limitations.

Looking back now, it’s almost funny how basic that first model was. But the impact? That was gigantic.