One year ago today people were lining up outside Apple Stores. Woz was handing out snacks. El Jobso was making surprise cameos. Scoble was screaming. Leo was chatting up the Google devs. Mossberg was flaunting his demo. Colbert was begging for his. Vloggers were vlogging and boy-oh-boy bloggers were blogging. The mainstream media was going gaga. Mike was live at the Mall of America. Dieter was right here, online, keeping us all up to date.
It was launch day USA. The original iPhone. 2G. Premium priced. Industry changing. Handset revolutionizing. Universe denting.
Now, with the iPhone 3G all but upon us, everyone here at theiPhoneBlog.com would like to wish the focus of our obsession, and all the techies at Apple behind it, a very happy birthday.
The iPhone comes in 8GB and 16GB. That’s a lot of capacity fill. And where do we get content enough to fill that capacity? No, not the torrentz (JAR!) — iTunes!
5 years ago, Apple realized that if they wanted to sell iPods, they needed to give people stuff to load onto those iPods. Now, what originally began as a Mac-only 200,000 song sparkle in the eye of Steve Jobs, has grown into the cross-platform (except for Linux!), multi-billion track served (some even DRM-free!), #1 music retailer, not to mention the foundation pillar of podcasts, with nearly a gazillion free audio (including our very own Phone Different Podcast!) and video programs there for the downloading.
Happy birthday, iTunes. And here’s to many more.
(And let’s work on getting the recording industry to give us the rest of those tracks DRM-free, and on some international movie and television content, b’okay?)
