The iPhones have it

It wasn’t just “techies” who were streaming the announcement from an Apple event announcing the new iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X. No, Apple executives, with CEO Tim Cook leading the way, made quite the show of presenting the new products, to applause and occasional cheers from the audience.

If there were any naysayers, the execs probably could have vaporized them with the iPhone X.

OK, that might be an exaggeration, but the iPhone is 10 years old, and the anniversary has brought forth yet more wondrous adventures in smartphoning. The latest editions are bigger, more clear, more powerful, more versatile and still very intuitive even for the less technologically advanced customers out there. (Any doubts that iPhones appeal only to younger users can be quickly dispelled at malls or grocery stores when a random older customer is asked for the time and instead of rolling up a sleeve reaches in a breast pocket for his or her phone.)

The iPhone, it can be said on this 10th anniversary, has indeed changed the world, eliminating those old fold-out road maps, or the need to painstakingly take down directions, or even the need to measure one’s morning walk first with the car’s odometer. Need a date from Antiquity? Look it up on the iPhone. The temperature? Hit the weather app.

Other phones do many of the same chores, but the iPhone is the standard by which others are measured. And speaking of measurement, that top-of-the-line iPhone X is going to run $1,000. Well, the Apple folks might say, try to find Antiquity on that rotary phone of yours.

This story was originally published September 13, 2017 at 1:43 PM with the headline "The iPhones have it."