6 Little Known Facts About iPhones

The first iPhone was invented in 1983!

Naturally, this wasn’t anything like the rectangular cell phone we know today. It was a land line phone with, instead of a touch screen, a built in stylus controlled interface.  It was designed by Apple computer developer Hartmut Esslinger, and foreshadows the touchscreen designs used by the iPad and iPhone today. He had also developed the Apple IIc, the first “portable” computer by Apple. It was never released to the public, but was kept in the Apple archives until the design was released in 1997 after Steve Jobs rejoined the company.
This iPhone isn’t the only prototype of Apple that never saw the light of day. Apple had toyed around with the iPad design for years before its launch. What’s interesting is that the 1983 iPhone device resembles an iPad with a phone, but iPads still lack this conventional phone call technology despite everything else they do. Perhaps the iPad appliance will enter that direction in its next iteration.

One third of U.S. High School students now have iPhones.

A recent semi-annual teenager survey by market research firm Piper Jaffray found that 34% of surveyed students now own an iPhone. This is an all time high, and double of what they saw last year. The reason for this, as explained by analyst Gene Munster is that the new low cost offerings by Apple have allowed many teens to get a phone. In even better news for Apple, 40% of the High School Students expressed their intent to buy an iPhone in the next 6 months, which is also at an all time high for the survey.

On a related note, 34% of students also said they had tablets. 70% of those are iPads. 19% of them said they would buy a tablet within 6 months, and 80% of those said it would be an iPad. Given most of our readers are in High School, let us know. Did you get an iPhone in the last year? Are you thinking about getting one, or an iPad? 

 

 

 

 

The 'Artists' icon on an iPhone or iPod touch is a silhouette of Bono, the lead singer for U2. 

Back in 2004, Bono and the other Irish rockers had a very close-knit relationship with Apple. The band filmed an iPod commercial, had their entire 400-song discography featured in the first iTunes 'Digital Box Set,' and even were featured on their very own limited-edition 'U2 iPod'! The band has since moved on to form a partnership with rival company Blackberry, but you can still see Bono's likeness on your iGadgets!

Another bit of iPhone trivia: The red pin on the Maps logo is located at the address of Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

If you own a jailbroken iPhone you know about Cydia. Cydia is also a name for an apple worm!

Clever, don’t you think? Jailbreaking is the colloquial term for hacking a device, typically an iPhone or iPad, to expand its capabilities to its fullest potential. When Jailbreaking first started to become big, people realized there needed to be a better way to distribute the hacks to make the process easier. 

 As a result, the open source distribution system Cydia came out. Cydia is generally the most popular of Jailbreaking software, just past Installer.app. Cydia is also now how most people get the hacks and apps not on regular iPhones.
 So why is it named Cydia? The created, Jay Freeman, says that he picked that name because of the worm cydia pomonella, which is often thought of as the stereotypical apple worm.

  

iPhones can survive falls of over 13,000 feet.

A skydiver lost his iPhone 4 in midair after jumping from 13,500 feet. Using a GPS tracking app, Jarrod McKinney was able to locate his runaway phone a half mile away on top of a building. Thankfully the phone landed on a building and not on a person’s head, or McKinney would be in a lot of trouble.

The screen was cracked, but not only was he able to track it down, he was also still able to answer incoming calls with it! McKinney must have been surprised by the device’s durability, especially since the same phone had previously cracked after falling a few feet off of a bathroom shelf. 

All advertisements for the iPhone show a time of 9:42.

Believe it or not, there is actually a logical reason for this! Whenever Apple releases a new product, they like to have the big reveal occur 40 minutes into each presentation. Therefore, the images onscreen show a time of 9:40...plus a minute or two because Apple knows the lead-up will never take EXACTLY 40 minutes.

Unlike the iPhone, the iPad ads all show a time of 9:41.