The iPhone celebrates its tenth anniversary
Apple introduced the iPhone ten years ago on 29th June 2007, and it is now difficult to think of a world without smartphones.
The company has sold over one billion iPhones since then, which makes the product one of history’s most successful tech innovations.
Since its introduction, the iPhone has become smarter and sleeker, and Justin McGurk, Chief Curator at the Design Museum, thinks that people cannot underestimate its cultural importance and the ways that it has influenced their lives.
McGurk said: “I think the iPhone is one of the most significant pieces of design of the early 21st century.
“The fact that it’s often the first thing we pick up in the morning and the last thing we look at [at] night. That we look at it about 80 times a day, it has influenced so many other mobile devices, and it revolutionised human behaviour.
“It is absolutely iconic. If you look at all the smartphones on the market today, they are all in some form imitations or improvements on the iPhone – it changed phones.”
British designer Sir Jonathan Ive turned the practical device into something elegant by giving the iPhone a minimalist design. He eliminated unwieldy buttons and replaced them with the pitches and swipes that are now standard for touch-screen devices.
Most people now consider using a smartphone to be essential. They will be sure to always associate the iPhone’s design with the first decades of the 21st century and remember that it set the standard for smartphones, causing such a major transformation in people’s lives.