Apple Just Made the Most Dramatic Change to the iPhone in a Decade. It Was Inevitable

The original iPhone announcement is one of the best examples of product storytelling of all time. When Steve Jobs stood on stage more than 17 years ago and introduced the first iPhone, he famously referred to it as three things: A "widescreen iPod with touch controls," a "revolutionary mobile phone," and a "breakthrough internet communications device." The bit was that those three things were just one device, a new type of smartphone. Jobs showed off a bunch of features like iTunes and the ability to browse the full internet. He made a phone call to Jony Ive, who was in the audience. He even prank-dialed a Starbucks and ordered 4,000 lattes to demonstrate that you could look up a business on Google Maps and place a phone call. Jobs also showed off the photo library app, which included the first demo of "pinch to zoom." The crowd was audibly impressed. Everything Jobs said was true, but looking back, it's interesting to think that none of those things really describe what the iPhone has become for most people: an internet-connected camera. Jobs barely even mentioned that the iPhone had a camera. "The biggest thing of note is that we've got a 2-megapixel camera built-in," Jobs said when describing the back of the iPhone. That's it. That's the entirety of the camera demo for the first iPhone. He didn't take any photos, which isn't super surprising considering the first iPhone camera was bad. At Monday's iPhone 16 launch event, by my rough estimation, the company spent 25 minutes talking about the cameras and camera-related features. That's almost a quarter of the entire presentation and almost half of the iPhone segments of the event. Apple thinks the camera is a lot more important today than it was in 2007. One of the most significant camera-related features is the introduction of a "Camera Control" on the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro models. They added a whole new button just to control the camera, and it's both a huge deal and entirely inevitable. Look, I get that adding a button on the side of the iPhone might not seem like a big deal, but the trajectory of iPhone design for a long time has been in the exact opposite direction. For years, it seemed like Apple considered physical buttons a blemish on its industrial design and was determined to remove them at any cost. That Apple is willing to add a button to the side of the iPhone shows how the world's most popular consumer product has changed over time. At some point in the last 17 years, the iPhone became less of a "revolutionary mobile phone, and more of a device people use to take and share photos. Sure, your iPhone can still send messages, check your mail, and even make phone calls, but the thing most people do more than anything else is snap photos and share them with their friends. The iPhone is basically an internet-connected camera for most people. With that context, it's not surprising that Apple is adding what it calls a Camera Control on each of the new iPhone models. It's a physical button that can be used to take photos, focus, zoom, and even activate a part of Apple Intelligence the company calls "Visual Intelligence." In the demo, a person takes a photo of a dog and the iPhone gives them information about it, including the breed. Then, he takes a photo of an event poster, and the iPhone asks if he wants to add the event to his calendar. But, the thing I think people will primarily use the Camera Control for is quickly taking photos because that is among the most common things people do with their iPhones, and the fact that they now have better access and control is not a small thing. There is a lesson here, which is that Steve Jobs had an idea about what the iPhone was when Apple designed it all those years ago, but the people who use it had another idea. Apple could have stuck with the original idea, but there's no way the iPhone would be anywhere near as popular as it is today. In that case, Apple wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is today. You have the same choice: You can stick with your original idea, or you can embrace the inevitable. Only one of those paths leads to this kind of success. Expert Opinion By Jason Aten, Tech columnist @jasonaten