Steve Jobs announced iPhone at the Macworld convention at the beginning of the year 2007 gaining substantial eyeballs from all walks of life. Half a year later on June 29, 2007, the first iPhone was released. People waited outside Apple stores for days in lineups that ran for blocks wanting to own the newest revolutionary iPhone; competitors were nervous of this unique product and its advanced technology; media was calling the product the Jesus Phone (Ritchie, 2017).
“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs said. The iPhone was the first smartphone that had no hard keypad for dialing. It was entirely a touchscreen device. The touchscreen technology was groundbreaking with multi-touch controls, more than select, and users could scroll and zoom as well (Bellis, 2017). There were smart sensors help iPhone’s performances: an accelerometer deciding to display from portrait or landscape perspective, a proximity sensor shuts down the screen when the phone is close to the ear, and a light sensor automatically adjusts the brightness of screen so that to save power (Honan, 2007).
It was the first smartphone managing the “apps” market with huge success. The iPhone’s technology is several years ahead of its competitors ever since. Even nowadays, when it happens to be the 10-year anniversary of iPhone, people are still fascinated by iPhone. When the iPhone X comes out, customers still need to wait roughly half an hour to get it since there are still many people wait in line wanting to purchase attracted by its face ID recognition, improved Siri and more revolutionary progress.
The iPhone is not merely a communication device now. It is our expressive multimedia tool making hundreds of social media applications accessible at one click.The iPhone’s dual cameras provide people with high-quality pictures and its improvement on camera functions make everyone a master of photography. Most people no longer need to carry the bulky digital cameras so that to record their lives. They take pictures through iPhone and instantly process the pictures and post them through various apps. This function and feature contribute a considerable portion of the social media content and is a primary trend that a large number of people want to maintain their social media content fancy and unique.
What makes iPhone so successful also relies on its achievement of personalization through iTunes, iCloud and the App Store. Once the user registered on iTunes, the contacts you have, the notes you write, the pictures you take and the apps you often use would all be stored on the cloud and could be retrieved to any device. These data and information make iPhone devices unique to a specific user, and thus users would maintain on consuming iPhones for its personalized data. What’s more, the improved Siri could provide information based on your application data without asking for permission from you through spotlight search. This service remains controversial but is personalized and convenient.
In the sense of Hauberian, the net is the vehicle for distribution of people’s ideas, thoughts and yearnings. The notion of networked media transformed from previously referring the communication channels used to interconnect nodes on a computer network to now broadly applying to the Internet and social media network sites. In today’s networked media, everyone is linked together, generating thoughts, sharing experiences and discussing on various topics through mobile devices as the result of the online-social-mobile media revolution.
In my opinion, every individual is an essential segment through the process. However, the net has disadvantages and there’s danger that users’ personal data or even powerful organizations’ online accounts would be hacked easily and be used for various purposes. On the one hand, hackers show excellence and cleverness in programming. On the other hand, common people or officials’ data have the potential being leaked or used. There is excellent content that users want to post and contribute to the social media world, but there are secrets and confidential material that should be kept from sharing and disclosing as well.
By Runnan Wei, BU Emerging Media Studies Master’s Student, weirou@bu.edu
Mather, John. “iMania”.Archived from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved March 3,2007. , Ryerson Review of Journalism, (February 19, 2007) Retrieved February 19, 2007
Hjorth, L., Burgess, J., & Richardson, I. (Eds.). (2012). Studying mobile media: cultural technologies, mobile communication, and the iPhone. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Honan, Mathew. (2007, January 9). Apple unveils iPhone. Retrieved from https://www.macworld.com/article/1054769/smartphones/iphone.html
Ritchie, Rene. (2017, June 29). 10 years ago today, Apple and iPhone changed our world. Retrieved from https://www.imore.com/history-iphone-original