The Evolution of the iPhone

Last night, I found myself binge watching the TV show Who Do You Think You Are. The show tracks the journey of celebrities who are trying to discover more about their roots and family tree. It got me thinking about how everything has a family tree, not just people. Foods, items, and technologies all have a detailed history behind them. Just like in the TV show, a sort of genealogy is traceable for any given item. I’d like to do some sleuthing of my own, for the product we all know and love: The iPhone.  Where did it really come from, and who made the world’s most recognizable smartphone possible? We’ll start at the very beginning, before the birth of Apple as a company. While there is endless amounts of information on the evolution of Apple as a company, I will only be including the information relevant to the iPhone and how it became the product it is today.

Steve Jobs did not create the iPhone (or Apple) by himself. He joined forces with friends Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to create Apple on April 1, 1976. Jobs and Wozniak were electronics enthusiasts who initially met in high school. They started Apple after Wozniak created a computer that had the ability to connect with a TV screen as a monitor, and had its own keyboard. Jobs was convinced they would be able to sell the personal computing device to the public, and thus Apple was created. They decided to choose the name Apple because it was “fun, spirited, and not intimidating“ according to Jobs. He was in a fruitarian diet phase and had just returned from an Apple orchard!

Wozniak and Jobs had a third cofounder, Ronald Wayne. Wayne was much older and wealthier and held 10% of the company while Jobs and Wozniak each held 45%. However, Wayne had more personal assets at stake and was nervous about the new startup. He sold his portion of the company back to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for just $800. From that point on, Wozniak and Jobs began to focus on growing their startup and expanding the product line. They created an even better version of the Apple I computer which was appropriately named Apple II in 1977. Seven years and many computer models later, the first Macintosh (Mac) was released. This was the ancestor of our iMacs and MacBooks. So, what brought the iPhone?

In order to figure out what exactly brought the iPhone to us, we need to look at its components. As we know, the iPhone is known for being a multipurpose smart device. It can make phone calls, take pictures, access the internet, and play music. Knowing this, we can deduct that Steve Jobs created the iPhone with multiple ancestors. Smartphones are actually handheld computers, so the development of the Apple I is a part of its history. The camera component was borrowed from the iPod Touch, and the music aspect from the iPod Touch’s ancestor, the iPod (and Shuffle). The iPod Nano was a transitional product from the iPod Shuffle and other iPods into the iPod Touch, and then iPhone, which all had screens. Not only did the iPhone utilize all of these components in its first release in 2007, but it began to evolve even more into the “swiss army knife” of phones.

Steve Jobs said this about the why the iPhone was so necessary:

We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn't very good. We talked to our friends, and they all hated their cellphones too. Everybody seemed to hate their phones. And we saw that these things really could become much more powerful and interesting to license. It's a huge market. I mean a billion phones get shipped every year, and that's almost an order of magnitude greater than the number of music players. It's four times the number of PCs that ship every year.

Incredibly, he seized both the opportunity for a groundbreaking device and the market for it. Soon, iPhones were a nationwide hit. In the same interview, Jobs noted: 

It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did.

In 2008, the iPhone 3G introduced 3G technology so that users could access the internet without a wifi connection. Soon after, the iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S came out. These devices came with a sleeker design, voice control features, and a second, forward facing camera for Facetime. Continuing on, the iPhone 5, 5c, and 5S are almost indistinguishable from the newest iPhone models. They are still being used around the world, and utilize the lightning cable instead of the older, 8 pin charging cable. The 5S was the first device to have fingerprint scanning technology embedded into the home button of the device.

Finally, this brings us to the iPhone 6, iPhone SE, and iPhone 7 (with their respective plus versions). Again, these devices look nearly identical from the outside and mostly have internal hardware differences. The main features remain the same, while they continue to use the new lightning cable for charging. One major difference is that the headphone jack was removed on the iPhone 7, and it also is splash/waterproof. A new iPhone is expected to come out at the end of 2017, and rumors of a completely redesigned iPhone 8 are beginning to pop up. Here is just one video showcasing some of the rumors for new and upcoming iPhones:

Based on the history of the iPhone, would you say their innovative period is over or just beginning? With the tragic loss of Steve Jobs, Apple may never be the same innovators they once were, but one thing is for sure; the iPhone is here to stay.