Hussein Shobokshi
IT’S been 10 years since Apple Inc. and its then president Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone. No one knew what this smartphone device would do when Steve Jobs first invented it. The innovation turned out to be a revolution and a qualitative shift in the means of communication that transferred the intelligent concept from company provided services to the device and offered the user with broader, larger and excellent options. Personally, this has had an impact on my life as well.
On a personal level, I love books and I am fond of collecting pens and wristwatches. Over time, Steve Jobs outdated these three products and integrated them into an electronic format and put it onto the iPhone device. It quickly grew into a revolutionary platform for hardware, software and services integration and inspired new products, like iPad and Apple Watch to come into existence. Thus, it has become easy to browse books on smartphone and read electronically without inks, printing and paper. Libraries began to close its doors with the decline in demand for paper books and everyone now believes that soon the paper book will become a thing of the past in a very short period of time.
Many book publishers and pen companies are suffering major crises as a result of significant drops in sales because of what Steve Jobs did. Today, people make limited use of pen and paper and are quite adapted to the method of e-mails, fast and short messaging on mobile phones registered on mobile devices. Thus, the smartphone has revolutionized the way people communicate without pen and paper.
The big blow also came from the smartphone makers to the wrist watchmakers. Watch manufacturers have experienced significant decline in sales. The new generation of young people are not interested in buying wrist watches as the smartphone product offers them not only reporting of time but other benefits as well and with better options.
The most important lesson learned from the iPhone is the technology’s ability to bring about changes in the society. There is no denying in the fact that Jobs invented the iPhone device to bring about changes in the media and in the mode of advertisement. He created a single platform to launch news, entertainment, education and communication between people in different ways along with millions of apps that have become essential part in people’s daily lives. Today, this has become the most important, influential and most dangerous tool as well in the hands of people.
The iPhone device has been imitated by other manufacturers, but it’s the foundation and its inventor who continue to set the rules of the game. Communication in the last ten years has contributed to the social revolution and behavioral changes, ethics of meeting and relations habits, some of which is good and some is bad. But what has been leaked about the future versions of the device that are expected in the market is going to be very interesting and stunning!
One invention caused three personal blows to me! May God forgive you Steve Jobs!
