The original iPhone was revolutionary. I got one in 2007. I was a college student at the time and would soon move from small town Kentucky to Washington, DC. That was just the excuse I 
needed to save up some money, ask my family for some more, and drop a cool $500 bucks at Cingular/AT&T (the exclusive iPhone carrier at the time). As awesome as that was (and it was AWESOME) there was very little (comparative) hype in the general public about that phone. While carrying it in public, people were more puzzled and nervous about me breaking that “giant” screen than they were amazed at the phone.
That phone changed the world. That’s not hyperbole. It literally changed the way society functions in a way that had not been seen since perhaps the automobile. It wasn’t the “giant” screen, the speed of the processor or even the fact that it was a phone AND an iPod. What changed the world was the way it made the real internet, in all its graphical glory, available anywhere at any time. Up to that point we had slow, mostly text based, mobile internet OR we accessed the full blown internet via a DSL connection on your computer at home. Wi-Fi was around, but wasn’t NEARLY as prevalent as now and only a few places had it (college campuses and coffee shops). With the iPhone we could get the full blown, un-modified internet on a screen in your pocket.
Nowadays we don’t care so much about the internet browser, or marvel at the “full internet.” We care about different things. We want that internet connection to do things for us. We want to be able to do things faster, easier and more secure. For that we use apps. Apps changed the world, again. Apple was the first to an App Store right, again, in an iPhone. Our apps keep us constantly notified, constantly in-touch, and constantly entertained to a degree not even imaginable back when the original iPhone was released.
In the years after 2007 other companies have caught up to Apple. Android as an “open source” OS has allowed other manufacturers to focus on product hardware design and functionality while Google works on the software that keeps it running. There are BEAUTIFUL android phones, with amazing features and the Google Play store is great. with all that said, nothing makes the world hold it’s collective breath quite like Apple’s September event.
Here it is, 10 years after the original iPhone and the hype is REAL. This is the 11th iteration (and yes, spoiler, the iPhone X is iterative, not revolutionary) of the device that changed the world and the w
orld is desperately wanting to be changed again. iPhone launches have, for the last decade, been a yearly spectacle that rival the Super Bowl in hype. Millions of people watch the keynote, pre-order within the first few minutes of availability, and stand in line regardless of the weather to get the latest and greatest iPhone. Each one of them (me included), whether they know it or not, are hoping to recapture some of the magic that they first felt when they pulled up ebaumsworld.com on their pocket computers.
People aren’t fascinated with the iPhone X because of the specs, display, camera, or lack of buttons. We are fascinated, even before launch day, because the iPhone X, with it’s from factor change, has the most potential to change the way we interact with the world since the App Store was introduced. We don’t want the next iPhone, we just want to be there when Apple changes the world again.
Wooden Pixels 