First iPhone in 2024 - Review & Retrospective 

Sorry for the delay, posted this a couple days ago but had to deal with some copyright shenanigans. Thanks for watching! The original iPhone managed to establish so many of the fundamentals of any smartphone today, it's actually absurd. Our phones nowadays are bigger & fancier, but the core experience genuinely isn't all that different 17 years later. ...I promise the next video won't take another 2 months. Probably. Maybe. Hope you enjoy this one, I know I enjoyed making it!

Crazy to think we are about as far away from the iPhone 6s as the iPhone 2G when the iPhone 6s was released

When the original iPhone was released in 2007, I was only 23 years old at the time of its release. I turn 40 in May of this year.

This was peak Technological Innovation.

The tech world haven't had that same feeling about a technology ever since the original iphone cameout in (2007), the world stood still because of the iPhone. (2007) will always be remembered for that!

Every time I rewatch that magical keynote, it reminds me how ahead of time was Steve's business thinking. Everyone lost their mind when he mentioned phone, most got extatic when ipod was mentioned, when he mentioned internet communication device, the reaction was 'meh, wha?'... Today... I mabe make 3-4 actual phone calls per YEAR? ipod functionality? Most of the people use spotify or apple music these days. What do we use our phones for? INTERNET COMMUNICATION.

I had the Nokia N95 when this came out and I remember feeling so smug comparing it to that first iPhone when a friend of mine got one of the latter. I just felt the Nokia had far superior hardware, especially in the camera department, and I saw no way that newfangled iPhone thing was going to make it against competition like that! Little that I knew then that iPhone had just heralded the era when software, rather than hardware, was the main reason people bought a smartphone (which is a term that didn't exist until iPhone came out I believe). With the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious now that there was no way Nokia's Symbian (and its later, ill-fated iterations) could compete with iOS and, later on, Android, no matter how good its hardware was.

13:50 Omg that air power animation is so good

I love this phone! I still have my dad‘s with the original box! It still works and I plug it in every now and then just so the battery doesn’t go flat.

Seeing Cydia on one of the iphones is so nostalgic.. I really miss jailbreaking

49:24 Steve Jobs and his team not only came up with all this, but they did it while being split up, having it kept secret from each other. The software team never saw the hardware and the hardware team never saw the software until it was time to put them together, and only Steve Jobs knew all the details.

Love your videos man, I've been binge watching your stuff since yesterday after watching this video. I think you have a great sense and skill for editing. I can also tell who your RU-vid inspirations are :3, and I approve there too. You're also a fairly great writer too, even at a young age and fairly early in your career. I've been looking for a tech channel like yours that has just the right ratio of personal opinion to historical fact, with perfect pacing for both of those aspects, with just the right aesthetic in the editing for all my tastes. It's usually not enough to get just a dry history of the facts; it helps to have someone add in enough of their own critical views of the information to provide 'personal context' to the facts. Makes it easy for the viewer to understand where things sit in YOUR opinion and where things sit RELATIVE to each other, without pushing history and fact to the side. It adds additional information to the timeline and lets me temper everything with the context that you provide, both personal and also relevant context to our current understanding of the state of the art. The reason I'm writing all this is because I'm a huge apple fan! lol. And that is because my family has been using their computers since 1981, and I have been personally using them since 1997. My dad is a professional photographer, and so has always been a huge apple fan; and he is a very lazy, but discerning buyer. He only cares about professional productivity and simplicity for his personal products so he can focus on his professional work. He loves to buy the best, but loves simplicity and ease of use, so he's always bought the shiny new apple stuff. And even though I usually don't get his hand me downs because they are too expensive not to sell off later, he'd always get me the low end stuff because he knew I was more of a minimalist, low-expectation kind of person. I am happy using low end stuff that is several years old, and I still am that way. So like iPod shuffle, iPod nano, low end iPhones, giving me old computers from my grandparentsI think apple makes the best laptops in the world, the best phones in the world, best operating system for PC use. They make the best of a lot of things. I was using a 2015 15" MBP that I bought for $1200 for 8 years until my cats broke it lol. Now I'm happily using a 16" M1 MBP that is basically the same size as a 15" MBP 2015. Also, I do have one tip for you as a photographer, I feel like you'd be better off if you kept your camera at a lower angle, like much lower, like orthogonal to your body. Especially with your posture, it tends to leave you at an angle that makes your glasses frames cover your eyes as well as some other strange angle issues. Not tryna tell you how to live, but I think you'd look better with a lower angle. Unless you want your persona to specifically look like a hunched over gargoyle that leaves your hair as the dominant feature of your look. It's not a bad thing if that's what you want to have yourself look. It is definitely much different than the typical tech tuber.

Thank you for this video! Watching this on my iPhone 14 pro Max, but my first iPhone was the 4s. First iOS device was the original iPod touch (RIP)! This video is exactly what the iPhone deserves! 🔥🔥🔥

I still clearly remember the first time I saw an iPhone in person. It was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Indianapolis. The guy sitting behind me had one and I asked if I could see it. He was super cool about showing me everything it could do and letting me play around with it. I bought one shortly after when it got the price cut. I was already on Cingular/AT&T at the time so that worked out well. Thinking back on how limited that phone was by today's standards is comical. But at the time, it was amazing.

Great video, always love what you put out! But super random question, for your weather do you use celsius or Fahrenheit?

This was fantastic. Great job. 👌🏼

Rest in Peace, Sam. You were one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the privilege of being friends with, rest easy, friend. ❤

Do an episode on jailbreaking

I still have my iPhone 3GS and it’s not restored and it has great iPod features that are long gone and and look so good and make me smile how the iPhone was an iPod and everyone had an iPod and the iPhone had a speaker and would make people jump when you would show them it playing as iPods didn’t have any speakers 🔊

The original iPhone was legendary which still lives on stronger than ever today. I think the natural titanium color on the iPhone 15 pro max looks very similar to the color of the 1st gen iPhone. How times have changed. I can only wonder what the 2027 20 year anniversary iPhone will be like? Or what the 2107 100 year anniversary iPhone edition be like?!

It was worth waiting for!

14:33 I feel like Steve would love how companies are moving to one single port. USB C

Thank you for this. I love your long retrospective videos. Especially the ones about Apple.

I think the photos from the older devices actually look better than the photos from the new devices haha. Like from the perspective of an ex-professional photographer, I think they are objectively more pleasing and grounded in fundamental aesthetics of general photos. My dad used to quote something from Jobs that you mention here, "People like to focus on tangibles of photos, like megapixels... we think about how to make better pictures." Or whatever the quote exactly was, since my dad has 'quoted' it so many times that I've gotten it mixed up over the years.

@21:04. I remember that in iOS 2 and 3. Double clicking the home button did open the audio controller. Which was like a small blue bubble with media controls and volume slider under it. (That may be an iPod touch 1st gen thing though)

This is amazing

Man, I envy your amazing videos man, I wish I could make videos even half as good as yours

Love seeing the AirPower prototype in all the videos :)

The closest device that I have to the original iPhone would be the original iPod touch that Apple released a little later in 2007. It still has iPhone OS 1.1.5, so on this version, the App Store still didn't exist yet. I remember to be able to sync music to it, I had to use an older version of iTunes on a Windows XP PC.

as for the 2G limitation, Freedom Mobile in Canada still supports 2G!! i have a plan with them and when i put my SIM card into an iPhone 4S, it connected to their 2G network fine, and even made calls. (and i made sure it was on 2G, as i turned off 3G!!)

The king is back

Another great video Josh, been a fan since 2019 and it’s incredible to see all the research and effort put into these videos while keeping our interest! From the iPod video to this, I think all of these retrospectives are awesome and have a lot of good insight, once again, thanks for putting in all this effort for us, you’re awesome!

This retrospective is amazing and well done and should help people to put perspective about visionOS 1.0 and the first Apple Vision Pro and how it can evolve in the next few years… it’s hype inducing. Great work!

Anyone remember the "Instinct vs iPhone" commercials back in the day? Those were pretty hilarious!😆

This channel ought to be called The iPhone Documentaries.

Wow. Using my 14 Pro I personally can’t get over how this used to be top of the line. Can’t wait to see the 16 Pro this fall.

I love the sonic music

We need iTunes phone review

I still want that that iPod phone with the rotary dialer btw

How long did it take for you to edit this video?

I miss Koi Pond

The live "slide across" demonstration was wild

I don't like using Apple products, and I am 99% of the time using an Android device and 100% of the time on PC, but every time I see that video of Jobs on the stage announcing the first iPhone is chills man. One of my favorite announcement videos

I knew a distant relative who owned an itunes phone.

WELL DONE JOSH.

You need an adaptor for the headphone jack

In 2007 4gb ram was common in PCs. So iPhone RAM capacity was extremely tiny even back then.

The Original iPhone looked like a MagSafe power bank on the back of the Max size iPhones

18:42 One of the things that I respect about Apple is that they never gave in into the shitty narrow phone trend. They knew that using that thing (specially in landscape) was horrible. Maybe some Steve Job magic still does live on

My iPhone3gs with ios3.1.2 is watching. ps no appstore = its Justified to get the old apps via other means on a device thats 20yrs old hahah its apples fault for not being good at super legacy apps for ios2 and Later. also some like me did loose my 2008 account in 2022 so ii lost the paid apps too but i still braught them i kept the resept anyways but on my 3gs i installed only a few old apps.

A lot of remote emergency services rely on 2g networks, a lot of older equipment, cars even (when 3g will shut down, these will fall back on 2g, maby a lot of car manufacturers in the us use t-mobile as their carrier of choice?), here in europe, 2g will be around for at least a couple more years, 3g will get shut down, to make room for 4g and 5g infrastructure. I still have my iPhone 2G i recharge from time to time, the battery has been replaced a couple of times, but it still works! Only a problem with wifi, but since this phone is useless anyway, i am not mad about that, i think i dropped it too many times, and yet, my screen is not cracked!

the giant screen is not so giant nowadays hahahahaha... today is a mini screen

As someone who remembers this day and the iPhones up tilt he four, my opinion is that it did great because it did the basics really swell, and in a way that just worked, yet was so amazing people wanted it. I feel if the carriers hadn’t been such dicks we might’ve gotten more devices like the iPhone earlier or sooner

Well the Dell x51 PDA had a better screen but Apple nailed finger friendly UI that well there were many people who wouldn’t have bought a PDA

38:40 They were just earphones. I guess you can call them “EarPods” but just note they did not come out with that name and shape till 2012 with iPhone 5.

The 1st iphone came out i graduated kindergarten in 2007 the same year

It’s crazy to think it’s been 17 years since the iPhone came out

Just look how small the iPhone before , compared today’s iPhone.

The search bar slander is wack, it's so useful now lol

Used to rock whitedoor on my iphone 2g until it dropped into sea water

first iphone i watched stuff, looked at socials, took pics and played a mobile game sometimes.... 17 years annd tens of thousands of dollars later most of us are on social media, watching stuff and maybe playing a mobilegame...

18:39 I think he would’ve mostly because his opinions were always changing and evolving. Ive would’ve likely pushed him into a compromise with the 6.

I think Apple has learned their lesson without Steve Jobs and realized that they need to go back to what works for people and what fundamental qualities and features people really want and need the most. It's why iPhones are going back to their design roots, it's why apple silicon looks and feels more like 2012-2015 MacBook more than 2016-2019, etc. And I am happier with their products than ever. I completely skipped everything from 2016-2024, with the exception of the iPhone XS after my 5s got destroyed :/

Also have to add, jobs was probably "inventng" the concept of the iphone as he was talking about the motorolla.

Finally, us non paying peasants can watch this

Having no charger brick is the right thing. I have a house full of old plugs and cables - I don't need more. It's a waste of resources making them.

I really miss my old iPhone 4 loved that thing. Wish these new ones still had a home button and bigger bezels. The amount of times I accidentally hit something is crazy

i used to make a living off fixing this and the 3g/3gs miss that because they were so easy

I don't see an "eye" on that iPhone.

It’s pronounced “Rockr” and the song limitation was due to the storage. This was mid 2000s. Not sure how old you are but there were many other reasons why Motorola and Apple didn’t work out.

My first and only Ipone was a Iphone 3gs. I liked the size.

New iPhones are just so focused on the camera “improvements” that it’s ridiculous.

Daily driving the best iPhone (SE 1st Gen) in 2024 gang gang

It was pronounced as "rocker" and no one ever pronounced it as "roku".

Maybe someone can explain what was so revolutionary in the first iphone?

I was the 2007th view

I have an iPhone SE 3 and I love it

Did you say SEVENTEEN YEARS? Seventeen years? Is that real? It’s not twelve? Seriously?

yeee

17 years later and we still locked in the same technology. Since Jobs death nothing has changed inside and out of this company. And it seems that will be until someone out there will bring something new to the world.... If they allow ....

I think jobs would be rolling in his grave over the vision and hate the fact the iphone is getting worse not better. The worst part is apple built themselves on being the cheaper better alternative. The mac 2 was $999 when the ibm was $1599, the imac was $999 when a pc was about $1399, and the iphone was $399 when a gps, phone and ipod would cosy you much more. the damn macbook air m1 was only $999 thats a bargain for that pc. a $2000 iphone is too much for a device that does one thing.

Sorry dude, but the reductionist way you dismiss display technology is disingenuous. The iPhone XR cost $750 at launch. Yes the display was good enough for the layman, but is it acceptable for a company to advertise a blatant cost-saving measure as some sort of innovation, or "good enough", when competitors are advertising devices less than half the price, that can output better, even back then? This is why the US Government is suing, people have been told it's good when it isn't and when they've asked for alternatives they've been trapped in the ecosystem.

First

אפל תדרוש מחברות הסלולר בארץ ובארצות הברית יותר כסף על סלולר וממיקרוסופט בחוזים על אופיס באייפון ומקבוק ומק יש לנו לנו על מה להישען טים בהודאה בכלכליסט וערוצי חדשות כלכליים.

This video compounds my confusion of Apple being accused of monopoly when they CREATED the whole smartphone market!!!! 🙄

Hii can you gift a iphone 8 gold my dream phone deliver to india kerala tvm parassala

Dude you keep showing this steve jobs showing the 1st iphone for like a like a 100th time now do you have other content idea beside this????jezzz...unsubscribing