Remembering the first iPhone 10 years later
THE FIRST iPhone went on sale at 6pm on June 29, 2007, kicking off the smartphone era.
And 27-year-old Ryan O’Donnell was one of the first to get one - after standing in line for six hours while battling sunburn, exhaustion and a very full bladder.
Ten years later, O’Donnell, now 37 and a San Franciscobased filmmaker, said that the iPhone’s debut made him feel like a “piece of alien technology had landed on the planet.” He and his friends had been discussing what it would be like if Apple were to create, as rumoured, an iPod phone. When it became a reality, he had to have it. “Reason went out the window,” he said.
Despite pulling an all-nighter at work, O’Donnell headed to the Apple store in downtown San Francisco around noon to wait for the evening sales launch.
He was not adequately prepared. For one, he was exhausted. Some people who were already in line had chairs and laptops.
Then, three hours in, the real crisis happened. He realised, with horror, that he really had to use the bathroom. “I thought I’d have to leave the line,” O’Donnell said. He eventually managed to get a hold of his partner, who worked downtown, to save his place in line. When O’Donnell got home, he opened his new phone - sliding to unlock it for the first time. “Oh, my God, this worked,” he remembers thinking. The filmmaker, who was introduced to The Washington Post by Apple’s PR unit, was the first among his friends to get an iPhone. He said felt like he had “a superpower,” the first time he used the device to easily find a restaurant.