Introduction
The iPhone is Apple's foray into the world of mobile phones, and the first generation device was announced in January 9th 2007 after years and years of speculation.
I decided to start keeping track of relevant (or irrelevant) mentions of it around mid-2004 or so, a few months before the ROKR launch turned the whole affair into something of a bad taste soap opera.
What this is not: This is not an attempt at keeping track of every mention of the iPhone, concept designs, re-hashed PR, near-identical transcriptions of articles from news agencies, mentions of an Apple MVNO, links to rumor site drivel, and a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas that are usually floated by pundits (who often have absolutely no idea of what is involved in developing phone hardware).
Motivation
At the time I started doing this (and for a very long time up to the actual announcement), I found the notion of Apple doing a mobile phone somewhat ridiculous, since there was no clear intersection between the iPod and mobile phone markets and there was already far too much bloat on phones.
Furthermore, Apple would have to deal with a lot of regulatory (and technology) issues that were not part of their core business, and they would always have significant difficulties where it regards being able to control the entire user experience from the moment they attached something to a carrier.
The Apple Way
Steve, however, turned the entire notion on its head and, after the ROKR fiasco, decided to do precisely that: acquire the required expertise, build (or design) the hardware from the ground up and create (in opposition to the prevalent ethos of most phone manufacturers) a virtually closed, Apple-centric mobile phone.
Their going with AT&T; was not an accident (what with Cingular being notoriously lacking in advanced mobile services), and only time will tell what will happen when it reaches Europe. Apple has, in fact, pulled a substantial stunt in the US - but that, as far as anyone in the mobile industry is concerned, rates as "interesting" rather than a "wow" thing. Their going with EDGE means that the initial device, as is, has little practical interest to operators in UMTS-enabled (and HSDPA-driven) Europe.
One can draw a parallel with the transition to Intel Macs (which was planned and executed in covert stages for years), and the past three years were certainly enough time for Apple to jump through all the necessary hoops and complete their learning process. Parallels with the Newton started popping up all over the place, too.
The Timeline
Here it is, without further ado, broken into four sections:
- Reviews - a summary table of all reviews around the US launch date
- European Launch - news coverage for the european launch on and around Sep 18th
- Post-Launch - generic news coverage on and after Jun 29th up to the european Launch on Sep 18th
- From Announcement To Launch
- The Early Years
I am also maintaining a page for the Safari variant that runs on the device and putting together some notes (for my own reference) on the hardware.
Most of the items I have collected over the years are listed in the Previously and From Announcement To Launch pages.
The Post-Launch page will henceforth be updated (as time allows) with news coverage to give readers a feel for the post-launch Hype.
My own opinions are interspersed where appropriate, and you can also read my first impressions (post-launch) and mull on the fact that it doesn't seem to include any particular Assistive Technologies.
Other Resources
Other stuff of interest that doesn't yet deserve a page of its own:
- Wallpaper Template, including pixel perfect dimensions.
- The iPhone Dev Wiki, that includes a list of GSM service codes - some of which are mandatory for any device.