About five years ago I had some time to kill, wandered into an Apple store, and picked up the new phone everyone was talking about. I played with a little, then set it down, cursing. I had just purchased a competitor’s top-of-the line phone, and after just a couple of minutes with Apple’s offering, my new toy suddenly felt like it was powered by whatever the phone equivalent is to MS-DOS.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the iPhone going on sale. Business Insider has a rundown of just how successful Apple’s product has been. It’s a pretty incredible list, and it reminds me of what one analyst said after the company’s January earnings report: “The numbers are so big that they almost seem like they should be typos.”
Here’s video from CNET of Steve Jobs unveiling for the first time what he called “a revolutionary mobile phone” at the 2007 Macworld Convention.