Seven Years Ago Today Steve Jobs Unveiled the iPhone

Today marks seven years since Steve Jobs walked onto the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and said “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” And he was right. (via CNET)

Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device. So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone…are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is. No, actually here it is, but we’re going to leave it there for now.

Since its launch, the iPhone redefined the category of smartphone by putting a computer into the hands of users across the globe and using the “ultimate pointing device,” our fingers, alongside a revolutionary user interface.

What we couldn’t see on stage, though, was “the gamble” Jobs took when he decided to present the revolutionary handset on this day of January back in 2007, highlights Fred Vogelstein, in his book “Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution”.

What he held on the stage was a “prototype that barely worked,” but fortunately Jobs managed to do a flawless presentation, and Apple engineers had a couple months to eliminate the bugs before the highly anticipated handset finally shipped on June 29, 2007.

You can watch the iPhone keynote below.