As we get ready for Apple's iPhone 7 launch today, a throwback to the beginning of iPhone revolution

Wednesday September 07, 2016 , 4 min Read

This is a day I have been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years,

Steve Jobs had begun, as he had sauntered onto the stage from the left of the auditorium, wearing his signature black turtleneck and jeans. It was January 9, 2007 at MacWorld in San Francisco, when Jobs took the stage to introduce three new revolutionary products from Apple- a wide-screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and an Internet communications device.

Image credit- Youtube

“Every once in awhile a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs had said, as he went on to describe how Apple’s Macintosh had revolutionised the personal computer industry in 1984 and the iPod revolutionised the music industry in 2001. “Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products of this class,” he had continued, before finally unveiling that the ‘three products’ were actually just one device - the iPhone.

Over the next hour and twenty minutes, Jobs had taken the audience through all the features of the new iPhone, gave them live demos, and showcased how it was a leap forward over existing smartphones. He had said,

Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

In 2007, the smartphone market was filled with phones with QWERTY keyboards, which occupied half the space and limited the screen size of phones. So Jobs and his team at Apple decided to introduce a phone with a 3.5-inch multi-touch screen with just one home button.

Talking about the user interface, Jobs had joked, “Who wants a stylus? Nobody,” and unveiled that our fingers would be the de-facto choice to type, scroll up and down etc. The iPhone had leveraged multi-touch capabilities with which users would be able to pinch and zoom in on pictures and text in their galleries, email and even websites. Apple also announced three important partnerships with Google, for Google Maps integration; Yahoo for Yahoo Mail and AT&T for network.

You can read Apple’s first official press release about the iPhone here and check out the full video of the iPhone introduction here.

Now, as we get ready for Apple’s announcements tonight here is a brief history of the iPhone.

Steps to tune into the Apple launch tonight at 10:30pm IST(10am PT)

According to the rumour mills, Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus today along with some other products. Here is how you can livestream the event across different devices.

Image credit- CNN

[Update 8pm IST, 07/09/2016- Apple seems to have setup a Youtube account for the launch titled- Apple Event, catch the livestream here. ]

For Macs

You will need to head to apple.com/live on Apple’s Safari browser on a mac running OS X 10.8.5 or later. Other popular browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox and others are not compatible for Apple live streams.

For iPhone and iPads

Almost same as the above, users will need to head to apple.com/live on Safari browser, on an iPhone or iPad that is running iOS 7 or above.

Apple TV

If you want to enjoy the livestream on a larger screen and have an Apple TV subscription, you have it easy. Several hours before the event starts, a new channel for the launch will appear on the homescreen.

On PCs

While iOS users, have it easy, PC users may need to jump through a few hoops to watch the livestream.

Windows 10 users can watch the livestream through the Edge browser, but those on older versions of Windows will need to install VLC media player and then point it towards this link-

On Android devices

Android users too will need to follow a similar process as PC users-download VLC player and go into the app's menu, tap the 'Stream' option, then paste this link(same as above).

What do you think about Apple's journey from the original iPhone to iPhone 6. What are your expectations from Apple's launch tonight? Do share in the comments below.

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