My iPhone Is A Photo Lab

What Do You Use Yours For?

Photo by Author, iPhone 12 Pro Max. Post-production: Graphite, Kompressor, Snapseed.

I forget the exact date, but I know what I was doing at the time: I was sitting through a rwo-week training session prior to being part of the original Apple iPhone Support Helpdesk. It was harder than you might think, especially when you realize that Apple’s obsession with secrecy meant we didn’t get to see a photo or even a drawing of an actual iPhone until the night it was released.

But as we learned more and more about its capabilities, I told out instructor that Apple had lied to us: they weren’t giving the world yet another mobile phone. I said, “Apple isn’t selling you a phone: It’s putting a computer in the palm of your hand.”

Apple had tried — and failed — to do this once before: The Newton was Apple’s first foray into Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs. Indeed, the term itself was created by Apple. Unfortunately — or fortunately — technological problems meant that the Newton was too expensive. As a result, production and development ceased in 1998.

Nine years later, in January of 2007, Apple released the first-generation iPhone. Today, in January 2021, more than 2.5 billion iPhones have been sold. I myself have owned 4 of them. My current model is the 12 Pro…