What if your phone, your music player, your camera, your map, and your game console were all the same thing?

A Secret Project

By the early 2000s, Apple was healthy again. The iMac was selling well. And in 2001, Apple released two things that would set the stage for something much bigger.

First came iTunes — a simple program that let you organize and play music on your computer. Then came the iPod — a small, beautiful device that could hold a thousand songs in your pocket. Before the iPod, if you wanted to listen to music on the go, you carried a clunky CD player and a stack of CDs. The iPod changed all that.

The iPod became a cultural sensation. Those white earbuds became a symbol. Suddenly, Apple wasn’t just a computer company anymore. It was a music company. It was a lifestyle.

But Steve Jobs was already thinking about something else. Something much bigger.

Inside Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, a small team was working on a top-secret project. They couldn’t even tell their families what they were building. The project had a code name, and the team worked behind locked doors.

They were building a phone.

Why a Phone?

You might wonder: why would a computer company make a phone? Jobs had been watching how people used their phones, and he hated what he saw. The phones of the mid-2000s were clunky, confusing, and ugly. They had tiny screens, physical keyboards with buttons so small your fingers could barely press them, and software that felt like it was designed to annoy you.

Jobs thought: we carry these things everywhere. We use them every day. Why do they have to be so terrible?

He also noticed something important. People were already using their phones for more than just calls. They were sending texts, taking blurry photos, and trying to browse the internet on screens the size of a postage stamp. The phone was becoming the most important device in people’s lives — and nobody was making a good one.

Apple could change that.

One More Thing

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto a stage in San Francisco wearing his usual jeans and black turtleneck. The audience was buzzing with excitement. Apple events had become famous, and Jobs was a legendary presenter.

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs said calmly.

He told the audience Apple was introducing three new products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. The crowd cheered after each one.

Then Jobs smiled. “Are you getting it?” he said. “These are not three separate devices. This is one device.”

The crowd went wild.

Jobs held up a small, thin rectangle of glass and metal. No buttons. No keyboard. Just a smooth, glowing screen you could touch with your fingers.

He called it iPhone.

Everything Changed

The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007. People lined up outside Apple stores for days — sleeping in tents on the sidewalk just to be among the first to hold one.

When they finally got it in their hands, it felt like holding the future. You could swipe through photos with your finger. You could pinch to zoom into a map. You could browse real websites — not the tiny, stripped-down versions other phones showed. You could watch videos, check email, and listen to music. All on one device that fit in your pocket.

But the true magic came a year later, in 2008, when Apple launched the App Store. Suddenly, anyone with a clever idea could build an app for the iPhone. Games, weather apps, social media, fitness trackers, drawing tools — the possibilities were endless.

The App Store turned the iPhone from a great phone into a tiny computer that could do almost anything. Within a few years, there were hundreds of thousands of apps. Some were made by big companies. Some were made by teenagers in their bedrooms — just like Jobs and Woz building computers in a garage decades earlier.

A Computer in Every Pocket

The iPhone didn’t just change phones. It changed everything.

Before the iPhone, you needed a separate camera, music player, GPS navigator, alarm clock, calendar, notebook, and game console. After the iPhone, all of that lived in one small device.

Other companies quickly followed. Google created Android, and soon smartphones were everywhere. Today, more than 5 billion people around the world carry a smartphone. That’s more than the number of people who have clean running water.

All of this traces back to that moment in 2007 when Steve Jobs held up a piece of glass and said: “This is one device.”

Apple Today

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, after a long battle with illness. He was just 56 years old. The world lost one of its greatest innovators.

But the company he built kept going. Under Tim Cook, Apple continued to create products that millions of people love — the iPad, the Apple Watch, AirPods, and new iPhones every year.

Today, Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the history of the world, worth more than $3 trillion. That’s more than the entire economy of most countries.

It all started with two friends in a garage who believed that technology should be for everyone. From a garage in Los Altos to the pockets of billions of people around the world — that’s the Apple story.

Did You Know?

  • The first iPhone had no App Store! Apps didn’t arrive until a year later in 2008. The original iPhone came with just 16 built-in apps.
  • People waited in line for up to five days to buy the first iPhone. Some brought tents, sleeping bags, and even pizza deliveries.
  • Steve Jobs originally wanted to call the iPhone the “MacPhone.” The team also considered “TelePod” and “Mobi.”

Think About It!

  • The iPhone combined many devices into one. Can you think of something in your life that could be combined with other things to make something new and amazing?
  • Steve Jobs said “This is one device” and surprised everyone. If you could announce one invention that would change the world, what would it be?
  • More people have smartphones than clean water. What does that tell you about technology and the world we live in?