Now that some of the initial hype over last week’s big iPhone 3.0 announcement has died down I thought it would a perfect time to reflect on iPhone 2.0.
I’m not talking about the iPhone 3G, this is way earlier. In a time before the Web was 2.0 and when 56k was still considered a decent connection speed, even before Apple’s OS had an X in it. Back then I worked for a company called BigPlanet.
BigPlanet’s core business was to have completely computer illiterate (and inept) sales persons market the “iPhone” to folks who wanted to get on the Internet, but didn’t know how to do so, or why they really wanted to get on it in the first place.
The iPhone sold for around $299 and came with a 2 year contract for BigPlanet’s less than stellar ISP service ($29.99/month for Internet plus and additional $5 for iPhone connectivity). Sounds like Apple and AT&T might have taken a page out of this playbook.
Infogear, the company that produced the iPhone was bought by Linksys and then eventually passed on to Cisco. This is where the grounds for the infamous Cisco vs. Apple suit came from.
Anyways, a while back we went up to Dallas to visit some friends and I noticed that they still had an original iPhone in all of it’s dilapidated splendor. I couldn’t resist taking some pictures for posterity’s sake.
I really can’t do justice to how pathetically craptacular the iPhone actually was, but I’ll try. In addition to being a phone, you could (in theory) use the small, gray-scale, touchscreen to browse the Web. The iPhone was capable of rendering basic HTML and some JavaScript, and was a complete piece of junk. You could navigate either by using the built-in qwerty keyboard or using a stylus on the touchscreen.
Behold, the iPhone in all of its majesty!
Tilt screen down
Tilt screen up
iPhone Directory
