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.
The phone did not go on sale immediately. Apple spent months on regulatory approval and software polish, and the iPhone reached U.S. stores on June 29, 2007. It launched exclusively with AT&T, then operating as Cingular, and used the slower EDGE network rather than 3G. It started at $499 for 4GB of storage and $599 for 8GB.
The launch drew long lines outside Apple Stores and AT&T shops. There was no App Store yet, and Apple's early position was that web apps would serve developers. That changed in 2008, when the iPhone 3G arrived alongside the App Store and the first software development kit.
In September 2007, Apple cut the price of the 8GB model to $399 and discontinued the 4GB version, which upset early buyers. Apple responded by offering a $100 store credit to people who had paid the higher price.
The first iPhone lacked features that are now routine, including copy and paste, MMS and third-party apps. Its importance lay in the idea: a single glass slab whose software could change after purchase. Nearly every smartphone that followed took the same basic shape.
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