Happy, birthday, iPhone!

On June 29, 2007, the original iPhone went on sale in the US. It was just iPhone. The first generation didn’t have a number or designation. The iPhone 2G moniker found its way to the original device later — not because it was the second generation iPhone, but because the phone utilized 2G cellular technology. Looking back, I think few of us could have accurately predicted just how much of a defining moment in our culture this would eventually become. We knew this would be a big thing. Few of us saw how much the iPhone would change the world.

There were plenty of mobile phones back in 2007. Remember Blackberry? They were still huge back in 2007. They had, by today’s standards, basic email, web, camera, messaging and other functionality. With a lot of prayer and a decent signal, you could even use it to tether other devices, such as a Palm OS device or even a Mac. Flip phones and brick phones were still absurdly popular.

We had handheld devices — Palm OS with its icon-based screen and downloadable apps was still a thing. If a mobile phone and a Palm device mated, you’d get a Handspring Visor….

At the time, the iPhone promised a superior web browsing experience. Albeit corded at the time, there was seamless (ish) synchronization between Apple devices. The phone came with a decent assortment of smart phone apps. Within a year, you could download and install “web apps” which I think hardly anyone ever did, thus the App Store.

Of course, no original iPhone tribute would be complete without the video of Steve Jobs’ original iPhone presentation at the 2007 MacWorld keynote.

Opening that first iPhone made me feel a sense of possibility like no other mobile phone has, before or since. It seemed to know when you opened the box because I remember sitting in the parking lot as it booted up after I removed the top of the box. No other cell phone I ever had did that, not even my Blackberry.

Quickly I discovered the camera and soon it became my favorite camera to shoot with, even if I had a better one available. It wasn’t the highest quality camera, but its 2 megapixel photos were pretty good at the time.

It was with me everywhere. “The best camera is the one that’s with you” became the iPhoneographer’s mantra of the time. Over the years, I’ve used my iPhone to capture small intimate moments and have tried to push the boundaries of what its lens sees to capture the spectacle of breathtaking vistas. When the App Store was unveiled, at first there was a low trickle of new photo apps — mainly camera replacement apps and a few app that would let you make some Photoshop-style adjustments to your photos. Then developers started to realize that there were few limits to what they could do creatively in the iPhone camera’s ecosystem and for years there was a flood of of creative iPhone photo and art apps and thousands of people using them to create works of art on their iphones — much of which still holds up today.

I’ve photographed friends, family, ballparks, ball games, buildings, sunsets, roads, vehicles, light, dark, shadows, fog, moments of history, cats, more cats, manhole covers, windows — thousands and thousands of moments I have been able to keep because my camera of choice was right there with me.

After 14 years, my iPhone – now an iPhone 12 — is still my go-to camera. Because the camera has been improved so much with each new device, I use it regularly to shoot stills for projects. I use the camera almost every day for a bunch of other mundane photos, like remembering where my car is in the parking garage or snapping a pic of a sale price that I know I’m going to have to show for proof to the checkout person at Target…. It still use it to capture random moments that I want to keep, like a sunset or a scene that catches my eye just right. I’ve adapted over the years and learned to see what my iPhone’s lens will see.

I still fire up my original iPhone. Its old 2MP camera still has unique light, tone, color and noise characteristics that I really like. Even though it’s a digital camera, one could make the argument that the original iPhone deserves its place as one of the all-time great, unique lo-fi cameras.

It’s small — tiny compared to today’s iPhones. It’s slow. It will sleep before it completes a cold boot. But even now, that original iPhone, a piece of technology that’s now ancient by today’s standards, still brings a smile to my face.

Happy Birthday, iPhone.

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