By Dan Moren

January 9, 2017 6:11 AM PT

Happy 10th birthday, iPhone!

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Holy cow, the iPhone turns ten today! A decade of multitouch and little rounded-rectangle icons.

Ironically, the original iPhone keynote was pretty much the only Apple event I missed during my tenure at Macworld. Ten years ago today, I was sitting in a hallway in the Las Vegas Convention Center, where I’d been sent–as a freelancer–to cover CES, and instead I was refreshing live coverage from my colleagues at the MacUser blog who were watching live at the Moscone Center. (Ah, the days before Apple events were streamed live.)

Needless to say, the only thing anybody at CES was talking about for the next day was the iPhone, and I gladly hopped my flight to the Bay Area to get a look at the device close up. (Well, in a giant rotating glass cylinder on the Macworld Expo Show Floor.) It would be almost six months before we could get our hands on shipping units, but it was clear even then that this was about to change everything.

Today’s iPhone is both noticeably different from that first model and yet instantly recognizable as an evolution of the same product. I’ve owned most of the models over the years (excepting the Plus versions, the SE, and randomly, the iPhone 5s), and the experience certainly has remained more or less constant over that time. Some rumors suggest Apple’s planning a major revision for the tenth anniversary of the iPhone–I’m skeptical. Apple doesn’t tend to care too much about marking the passage of time: if the company’s ready to deliver a major revision of the product, it will; if it isn’t, then it won’t. It’s not going to make that decision based on a calendar.

So here’s to another decade of the iPhone’s success. If you want a look back at where it all started, enjoy this trip down memory lane: the original keynote. Which I wasn’t at. Not that I’m bitter.¹

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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