While on vacation in Hawaii with his family in 2011, Tony Fadell couldn’t get something out of his mind: a group of people at the resort unable to put down their phones and in search of the perfect paradise selfie—or snapshot of their tropical drinks.
“They’re not enjoying the world around them and you’re like, wait a second. What’s going on here? We are disintermediating reality with this screen in front of our face?” he says.
But Fadell wasn’t just some cranky guy on a beach: He’s one of the creators of the iPhone.
Fifteen years ago this week eager fans lined up in the streets to buy Apple’s first phone. It wasn’t the first smartphone, but the iPhone was the phone that changed phones—and then changed everything, The Wall Street Journal details in a new feature.
Android phones from Samsung and others eventually expanded the market and reached the masses, but Apple had the Model T, the first one to follow down the road.
Users’ first worry about the iPhone was its lack of a keyboard, but maybe it should have been how the phones and the apps and selfies that followed would change how people communicate and spend their time.
read the full story about the iPhone, which examines the phone’s iterations and assesses its lasting impact.