# The iPhone Was Panned. Then It Ate the Industry

> In 2007 the iPhone lost on every spec sheet, and PCMag still called it the 128K Mac of its century.
- Title: The iPhone Was Panned. Then It Ate the Industry · PCMAG
- Summary: In 2007 the iPhone lost on every spec sheet, and PCMag still called it the 128K Mac of its century. The device that wins is rarely the one with the best…
- Keywords: iphone, apple, smartphones, tech history, product design, technology, Panned, Ate, Industry, PCMAG
- Source: PCMAG — https://pcmag.com/articles/we-predicted-iphone-would-lead-to-some-insanely-great-products-it-did
- Author: Eric Zeman
- Published: 2026-09-11T17:35:40+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: iphone, apple, smartphones, tech history, product design, technology
## Six months of hype
Steve Jobs held up the iPhone at Macworld in January 2007, but it did not reach Apple and AT&T stores until June. The wait felt like an eternity to everyone watching.
## Jesus phone or junk
Before launch it was both worshipped and mocked. Believers called it salvation from tech drudgery, skeptics judged it entirely by the features it was missing.
## The review that aged well
PCMag's Sascha Segan and Tim Gideon were skeptical, yet they called it a great first try and predicted what came next with startling accuracy.

> Think of this as the 128K Mac of the 21st century, a vanguard product, maybe not perfect...but heralding some insanely great products to come.
## A tense room in Vegas
Apple announced in San Francisco while the industry sat at CES. The next day Segan loudly grilled Apple and AT&T over shipping 2.5G EDGE instead of 3G.
## Losing on paper
No 3G, no stereo Bluetooth, no third-party apps, and one-day battery life when rivals ran twice as long. BlackBerrys, Treos and Windows Mobile phones did more on every line.
## A camera that barely worked
Two megapixels with one capture mode, while Nokia shipped 5MP with several. It could not send picture messages or record video at launch.
## Ballmer laughed
Microsoft's CEO said there was no chance the iPhone would get significant market share. Apple sold a million units in 74 days and never slowed down.

> There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.
## Fingers beat styluses
It was the first phone driven purely by touch. Everything else used resistive screens with a stylus, plus direction buttons or scroll wheels to actually get around.
## Swipe and pinch stuck
Multi-touch existed before, but the iPhone made it useful. The gestures it introduced for moving through home screens and menus are the ones we all still use daily.
## The web, not WAP
Safari rendered real HTML and images while rival phones served stripped text through WAP browsers. The iPod app brought color and fun to menus built from folders and lists.
## Not a very good phone
Segan praised how everything connected, then said call quality was the worst he had heard on a high-end device in years. The review gave credit and docked points honestly.

> It isn't a very good phone. Call quality was the worst we've heard on a high-end device in years.
## No corporate email
Enterprise messaging was the whole business for RIM and Microsoft, and licensing Exchange access was big money. Critics could not believe a smartphone would skip it.

> What sort of smartphone doesn't have corporate email?
## Killers that never landed
LG, Motorola and Samsung raced out iPhone killers for a year and all of them flopped. Nokia, RIM and Microsoft barely bothered until Android arrived in October 2008.
## Key takeaway

The device that wins is rarely the one with the best specs, it's the one with the best experience.