iPhone - initial thoughts and experiences

My first encounter with the iPhone as a new technology was in 2007 when I watched a recording of Steve Jobs giving the iPhone keynote speech, which was posted on the Apple website. Here is the introduction of that keynote speech:



Steve Jobs and his marketing team certainly know how to create an atmosphere. The keynote speech itself deserves analysis in terms of its audience and their reception of a new Apple based technology. The keynote speech saw Steve Jobs and Apple going public about their "revolutionary product", that until now had been open to rumours and prediction as Apple had done their utmost to keep vital specifications a closely guarded secret. I remember working as a technician, in a Mac based editing suite in further education (before the iPhone was officially introduced), the stories that circulated amongst fellow technicians - stories that guessed at iPhone functionality, form and release dates. The stories usually had their roots in online rumour mills but some were just speculative. I was shown several supposed 'leaked' images of the iPhone by one of the technicians that I worked with, images that appeared to be little more than Photoshop mock-ups using existing Apple technologies (mostly iPod) as their basis. The fact was that even though very little was known about the iPhone at this time (about a year or so before the iPhone keynote speech) the device was eagerly anticipated.

Around a year or so later I was viewing the keynote speech in preparation for some AS Media Studies lessons on New Media Technologies. The iPhone announcement had rekindled my interest and I decided to use the device as an object with which to illustrate the basic concept of converging technologies. At the time the iPhone itself seemed a long way off - the product was just being introduced to the industry and was not even available in America. The keynote speech was the first insight into what the iPhone would actually do that was so "revolutionary" and formed an exciting and current case study for my students.

During the taught session that I had been preparing for I played an excerpt from the iPhone keynote speech. At the time the product itself felt unobtainable; the iPhone had not been released in America, let alone in the UK. There would be the usual delay of several months before the new Apple technology was distributed in European countries. At the time the iPhone presented itself as a new technology although Apple themselves were using the tag line “Apple reinvents the phone” (click here to see an archive of Apple.com on the day that details of the iPhone were posted) - a great case study to us as an AS level introduction to converging technologies and remediation. The class that I was teaching certainly saw the iPhone and its different functions (through viewing the Apple website and keynote speech) as genuinely new and much comparison was made with the iPod, a version of which most of the group already owned. The iPod was used as an object with which to explore the functionality and new features of the iPhone. There was some question of when the iPhone might be available in the UK but it seemed to be seen as a distant and unobtainable new device that existed somewhere outside of their realm.

Several months later I had my first hands-on experience of using an iPhone. A visiting relative who had purchased a first generation iPhone presented the device on a sight seeing walk around the city of Bath. We had walked up to the Royal Crescent and were debating how much it would cost to live in the area. A throwaway comment that came up during this discussion questioned how big the gardens of the properties were - an aspect that we could not see from our vantage point at the front of the buildings. A few moments later the aforementioned iPhone was presented to the group - in its display was a satellite image of the Royal Crescent, positioned so that we were able to view the (considerable) size of the gardens to the rear of the property. The image below is a photograph that shows roughly what we viewed on that day (this image has been recreated using a second generation iPhone:)


I remember being captivated by the way in which the user was able to causally scroll through the satellite image - interacting with the iPhone screen with a two-fingered action to zoom in and out of the Royal Crescent gardens. This image navigation was by no means new to me; I had used Google maps and Google Earth before. What was new was that we were viewing a satellite image of our location whilst ‘on location’. We were not huddled around a computer in an office, we were out in the city - we could have been anywhere in the city of Bath, or the UK for that matter, and yet still have access to an aerial view of our location (as long as there was a network signal of course). Our group conversation had been extended, informed or even ‘answered’ by technology, by instant and mobile access to information.

So I had two genuinely new experiences here: 1) Rapid highly mobile access to high resolution satellite imagery 2) viewing the navigation of these images by means of touch (as opposed to the drag and drop gestures of using a mouse). What the iPhone appeared to offer at first glance was near instant access to information whilst mobile within the city. In terms of the technology that was supporting these experiences there was little that was genuinely new. Mobile internet access was available before the iPhone - other mobile phones (using a WAP interface), PDAs and laptops all had the capacity to display Google Maps but few if any of these devices would have displayed the information at the speed of the iPhone. There was no need to search for a connection; this was taken care of by the iPhone without intervention from the user. Arguably a laptop, which was powered up and connected, could have displayed the same image based information - but iPhone was completely portable, from pocket to hand in a moment. A PDA possess this portability but not a multi-gesture touch screen that forms the basis of a seemingly new form of interaction with a device. There were elements of both new and old (existing) technologies at work during my first encounter with an iPhone and it was this combination that made the experience seemingly something genuinely ‘new’. It is not insignificant that I, somewhat unconsciously, labelled ‘existing’ technologies as ‘old’ in the previous sentence. The iPhone appears to render forms of the same or related media as ‘old’ and ‘out of date’ although it is still ‘current’.

A little later the same day, once we had returned to my house, I got to ‘play’ with the first generation iPhone used to locate the Royal Crescent gardens. I remember feeling a sense of increased responsibility as I grasped the device firmly in my hand - I did not want to drop it, it was a rare possession that I was fearful of damaging - although sturdy the device had an air of fragility about it. I was shown how to connect to the wireless receiver in my living room and I used Safari to browse the Internet for several minutes. To be honest I had a few problems navigating my way around the phone and did not get much out of this first hands-on experience; I was not used to the gestures that were used to navigate the interface - pushing, pinching, flicking and scrolling with the thumb and forefinger were not methods of interaction that I was used to, or even fully aware of at this point. I gained more from viewing the phone in the hands of an expert - its owner.