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iPhone’s debut 8 years ago hid its potential

But explosion of apps soon revealed a revolutionary product

Crowds seeking the first iPhone waited at a Boylston Street store.Bill Greene/ Globe Staff/File 2007/Boston Globe

Eight years later, it’s easy to remember the first delicious shock of using an iPhone. June 29, 2007, was day one, the day Apple Inc.’s new smartphone went on sale, the day it first fell into our hands. And the wonder of that first experience comes close to blotting out our memories of how flawed and limited that first iPhone was.

There was, for instance, no built-in GPS chip. Even my cheesy Motorola flip phone had built-in satellite navigation in 2007, but not the iPhone. It didn’t support 3G wireless data service, ensuring that incoming Web pages spooled downscreen at a crawl. It was available only through AT&T, whose underdeveloped wireless network nearly collapsed under the stress.

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But perhaps the biggest weakness of the new phone was its lack of something most people didn’t even know they wanted: third-party apps — software programs written by other companies to run on the iPhone.

The first iPhone came with Apple’s own apps: e-mail, a Web browser, a text-messaging program, YouTube, and not much else.

Software developers knew they could do a whole lot better. They realized that Apple had created a vest-pocket Macintosh PC that could spawn a vast new software industry. So they began hacking the iPhone’s operating system and cobbling together useful little programs for it: games, messaging software, voice recorders, barcode scanners, and baby monitors.

And Apple slapped them down. The company issued updated iPhone software that deactivated unauthorized software. Cofounder Steve Jobs wasn’t being vindictive. He realized the benefits of welcoming third-party apps. But he also knew his new product’s reputation would be burned to ash if somebody managed to distribute apps that crashed phones or stole their owners’ data, or perhaps infected AT&T’s whole network. So although Apple allowed for independent apps that ran safely inside the phone’s own browser, developers of stand-alone apps were told to back off.

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Until July 10, 2008. That’s the day Apple launched the App Store, a place where iPhone users could obtain third-party apps that had been tested and approved by Apple. You can make a pretty good case that this was the real birthday of the iPhone, the moment it became a transformative tool, a nearly indispensable adjunct to daily life.

Because of apps, your smartphone isn’t just a phone anymore. Today you can write Microsoft Word documents on your iPhone, remotely start your car, or look at the security camera in your child’s bedroom. Doctors use them to run medical tests; cops use them to scan suspicious license plates; soldiers use them to map battlefields in Afghanistan.

It’s the most significant transformation wrought by Apple’s amazing little gadget. And very few of us who marveled at that first crude, cool iPhone had any idea how much cooler it would soon become.


Hiawatha Bray can be reached
at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.