What I Wrote About the First iPhone Weeks Before It Launched

Jan 10, 2017

10 years ago I wrote this about the first iPhone a few weeks before it came out. I feel like I nailed it pretty well.

I said it’d be about simplicity. Doing a few things well. And a focus on design.

And that’s precisely what they did.

I don’t feel like this means anything going into the 10-year anniversary and the iPhone 8. I think everyone’s just about figured out the formula at this point. They’re still not as good at it as Apple, but at least they’re playing the same sport now.

I’m looking forward to the iPhone 8. I’m hoping it’ll have two things:

1. A completely smooth front (no forehead, no chin, and no home button).

2. Wireless charing.

Those would be enough for me—along with some nice resource bumps of course.

To me the completely smooth front is a major milestone in mobile tech. It’s the marble slab. The shapelessly perfect slate on which future tech can create anything.

And high-quality wireless charging is similar. It’s the breaking of a tether to the past. It’s removing one more physical annoyance that weighs down the mind.

Soon apps will be the same, and everything will be voice, gesture, and text (when it’s not just inferred by our digital assistants).

But that’ll be a while still. For now I’d love to see a clean design upgrade with these two main features.

Notes

1. That post is in its original, unaltered form from 10 years ago. I have a few others like it as well, all from around the same time. I wrote them because I was debating with friends about whether the iPhone would fail or not.

2. Here’s a longer form version of this post, which was a letter I wrote to a buddy I was debating with. Link