The presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade later. For example, he doesn’t focus much on apps. When the iPhone was first introduced there was no App Store, and this was by design. As Andy Grignon, an original member of the iPhone team, told me when I was researching this topic, Mr. Jobs didn’t trust third-party developers to offer the same level of aesthetically pleasing and stable experiences that Apple programmers could produce. He was convinced that the phone’s carefully designed native features were enough. It was “an iPod that made phone calls,” Mr. Grignon said to me.

Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already found important and make them better.

The minimalist vision for the iPhone he offered in 2007 is unrecognizable today — and that’s a shame.

space-time wrote:
I think the problem is there are way too many low quality Apps that really do nothing useful and also Social Media is too intrusive. People post pictures of their pets, their food, selfies, etc. Just too much noise in our daily lives.

I recently installed Twitter on my iPhone and I am amazed how much noise I get. I have a Whatsapp group just to keep in touch with our HOA neighbors. As soon as I buy a house and leave this HOA, I probably delete the Whatsapp. OK maybe not, it sometimes comes in handy when I call my parents, that have Andoid phones and if their MacBook is closes, I use Whatsapp to ring them and tell them to open the MacBook, then use Facetime.