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The Apple iPhone launched a habit none of us can break

时间:2024-09-22 02:05:25 来源:摩登家庭人人影视网 作者:资讯 阅读:514次

Imagine a one-inch window. Not very interesting, but if you make larger, say, 10 inches, you start to appreciate the sunlight coming through it, the sky, almost discernible trees, and the fleeting glimpses of people passing by. It holds your attention, at least for a little while. Now let’s make that window 10 x 8 feet tall.

You can’t look away. There’s so much going on, so much visual information. You want to stare out that window all day long.

Mashable ImageCredit: Getty ImagesSEE ALSO:Apple iPad Pro 10.5 is Apple's best tablet

That was the simple formula for the very first iPhone, released on this day, June 29, in 2007. Apple didn’t just lose the physical keyboard; it made the screen the same size as the 3.5-inch device, making it larger and more compelling than any touchscreen on any mobile phone before it.

In the early days, people weren’t craving apps and experiences they didn’t know they were missing.

That it took Apple a year to marry that window to the world with an App Store worthy of its skills is still surprising, and it’s a wonder that people didn’t give up on the pocketable device with middling phone capabilities, one carrier option (AT&T) and web-based apps that were mostly just “meh.”

Mashable Games

Of course, the iPhone didn’t arrive as an empty vessel, waiting for consumers to figure out what belonged on the other side of the beautiful window. Apple’s native apps -- Mail, Safari, Camera, Photos, Calendar, Weather, Notes, Stocks, Clock, Google-powered Maps, SMS texting, YouTube, and the iPod app -- covered so many bases that, from day one, the iPhone felt like a full-featured mobile device.

In the early days, people weren’t craving apps and experiences they didn’t know they were missing. No one envisioned choosing future dates via swiping through Tinder, hailing an Uber car with just a few taps, or sharing every single thing you’re doing via disappearing snaps.

There were similar native apps on the Palm Treo, the BlackBerry 9800 (it had Breakout, too) and the T-Mobile Sidekick, but most of the screens were smaller, lower resolution and less colorful, and they relied heavily on support from the keyboard or other physical controls, like a scroll wheel.

With its intuitive, brilliant and unapologetically skeuomorphic all-touch interface, the first iPhone was, even with just a handful of apps, a gateway drug for the future of the iPhone devotion.

And I do think devotion is the right word.

That screen tho

I remember touching an iPhone for the very first time on June 28, 2007. It was a right before the official launch and I knew one of the four people then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs had personally selected to review it. I had fewer than 10 minutes with the first iPhone and, even then, I knew it was something special and, no joke, immediately felt its addictive qualities. I did not want to give the iPhone back.

Early touchscreen devices like my old Palm Treo were already adept at changing our daily habits. More powerful than design-forward fashion phones like the ridiculous Nokia 7280 and less text-centric than the Sidekick, the Treo embraced the idea of apps and tried to engage you on its relatively small screen.

Mashable ImageThe Palm Treo: what smartphones used to be before the iPhone.Credit: Julian Muñoz/Flickr

None, though, could match Apple’s design confidence. The screen was the size of the phone, but Apple's iPhone interface windows was endless. The native apps had a whole world beyond the borders of the iPhone display, which you could access with the touch or swipe of a finger.

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The iPhone was so intuitive that users soon stopped focusing on the "how" of things and instead on the doing of things. Over time, the focus shifted from, “Hey, look at this sexy, new smartphone,” to “Look at what I did on my iPhone.”

Apple's obsessiveness over its native apps helped guide a generation of app developers, and, by 2009, Apple was reporting over 50,000 apps (many of them free) in the App Store.

What always struck me about third-party iPhone app development is how apps could be based on the simplest idea. Before Apple created a flashlight app of its own, third-party developers did it for them. Ocarina was a recreation of simple child’s instrument. These apps were the opposite of applications on the desktop, which tended to be huge, deep, and ready to handle 1,000 tasks. iPhone Apps were (and many still are) designed around single, concise thoughts, which, of course, made them more approachable and natural to us.

Fast forward a decade, 154 iPhones and hundreds of thousands of apps later and the window Apple opened can't be closed.

The ever-present digital window

Our iPhones are always with us and on day and night. They're our alarm clocks, workout buddies, sympathetic ear, our debate platforms, news readers, photographers and videographers. Apple and developers have made the iPhone indispensable and, in the process, changed us.

Were we obsessed with our text-based phones in 2007? Sure, but we were only obsessed for that single task (okay, maybe two tasks: texting and email). We had to put the phone away to get everything else done. They connected us to friends and loved ones via SMS, but that’s nothing compared to the connection you get through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, FaceTime, and Snapchat.

Wait. We left it behind?! Dear God, where is our iPhone? Find it! Now.

Now, instead of one or two sources of updates, we have dozens. With all notifications on, your iPhone could potentially buzz continuously 24 hours a day.

All that constant connection has turned most of us into a twitchy mess. We reflexively reach for the iPhone (and every large screen device that copied it, because they alldid) even when it isn’t buzzing. We feel phantom vibration on our legs an in our bags even when we’ve left the iPhone behind.

Wait. We left it behind?! Dear God, where is our iPhone? Find it! Now.

Oh, it’s on the desk, next to us.

I'm not the only one who sees this growing obsession. Dr. Larry Rosen, co-author of The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech Worldadmitted that he was in awe of the iPhone when it first shipped (buying the first model) and, over the past decade, has seen a growing obsession.

"We note it in our research on anxiety that people who use their smartphones a lot tell us that they get highly anxious if we take them away (we monitored their self-reported anxiety over an hour-plus period)," Rosen wrote in an email to me, "and if we then text them and not let them see the message they show a spike in their galvanic skin response which signals anxious arousal."

Rosen and his co-author Dr. Adam Gazzaley studied 200 college students and how they interact with the phone. Most unlocked their phones 60 times a day for a total of 220 minutes.

And remember that phantom vibration I mentioned? Rosen told me that students are not even checking their phones based on actual pings.

"At least half the time they unlock their phone with no apparent external alert," wrote Rosen in the email, "The alert comes from in their head which is telling them that they need to check in often. Check in with what? It is nearly always something to do with communication. We now have far more ways to communicated than we did when the iPhone came out a decade ago."

This is what I mean. The iPhone has opened that very big window and we love it for it, but there are times when it makes us feel like we want to jump out a window.

Happy 10th anniversary, iPhone.


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