50 Things That Made The Modern Economy

An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator, an iPod, a phone.

Are you getting it?

On the 9th of January 2007, the most iconic entrepreneur on the planet announced something new,

a product that was to become the most profitable in history.

This is one device.

And we are calling it iPhone.

Today...

There are many ways in which the iPhone has defined the modern economy.

There's the sheer profitability of the thing, of course.

There are only two or three companies in the world that make as much money as Apple does on the iPhone alone.

There's the fact that it created a new product category, the smartphone.

The iPhone and its imitators represent a product that didn't exist ten years ago,

but is now an object of desire for much of humanity.

There's the way the iPhone transformed other markets, for software, for music, and for advertising.

But those are just the obvious facts about the iPhone.

And when you delve deeper, the tales are surprising one.

We give credit to Steve Jobs and other leading figures in Apple.

His early partner, Steve Wozniak, his successor Tim Cook, his visionary designer Johnny Ive.

But some of the most important actors in this story have been forgotten.

Ask yourself, what actually makes an iPhone an iPhone?

It's partly the cool design, the user interface, the attention to details in the way the software works and the hardware feels.

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