The story of the original iPhone launch, from keynote to checkout line
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs stood on the stage at Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco and introduced three products in one: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone and an internet communicator. The audience understood the punchline only when he explained that these were not three devices but one, and that it was called iPhone.
The device had no physical keyboard and relied on a multi-touch screen, a technology that let users pinch, scroll and tap with their fingers rather than with a stylus. Apple also showed a version of its Safari browser that displayed full web pages instead of the cut-down mobile pages common on phones of the day. The operating system was a stripped-down relative of Mac OS X.