Apple iPhone: The Gadget That Rewired Modern Life

The iPhone needs no introduction – yet it deserves a proper one. In 2007, Steve Jobs pulled a small, glossy rectangle from his pocket and casually rewired modern life. Today, an entire generation has come of age without memory of a world before everyone carried either an iPhone or an Android phone on its hands. But what kind of a world was it, then? It was a world of gadgets. People commuted with tangled earbuds connected to dedicated music players. Nights out were documented with pocket-sized digital cameras. Some toted a Palm Pilot, or the younger ones, a Nintendo DS. And, of course, there was the cell phone: the most mainstream of all devices, but still a utilitarian object that focused solely on communication, with tiny screens and physical keypads. Smartphones existed – clunky, stylus-driven bricks running Windows Mobile or Palm OS – but they were the domain of businesspeople and tech diehards. BlackBerry reigned for a time, with its full QWERTY keyboard and modern texting capab ... Read full article.