Ten years ago on June 29, 2007, hundreds of soon-to-be iPhone owners crowded their local AT&T and Apple stores and waited in the summer heat for the chance to take one of those shiny devices.
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The first iPhone had no App Store, no copy-paste, camera flash or video recording abilities and required a two-year contract with AT&T. Oh, and it came with a $499 price tag for just four gigabytes.
Months before the iPhone hit stores, the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs (black turtleneck sweater and all) hit the stage at Apple’s Macworld conference in San Francisco, California, to unveil the “revolutionary device” that, he said, “changes everything.”
Rehearsals for the event on January 9, 2007, didn’t go exactly as planned.
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In fact, according to the first iPhone's senior manager of radio Andy Grignon, who handled "the equipment that allowed the phone to be a phone," Jobs could rarely make it through his 90-minute show without a glitch during the top-secret rehearsals, he told the New York Times.
But the legendary presentation wowed crowds and audiences everywhere, leading to 10 years of iPhone innovation and more than 1 billion iPhones sold worldwide, according to Business Insider.
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And the company is showing no signs of slowing down. Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this year, in a statement celebrating the iPhone's 10th anniversary, "the best is yet to come."
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