When I told my my old friend Derek that I'll be in Sydney and we should catch up, he asked if I'd like my 1st-gen iPhone back. I totally forgot that I sold it to him, probably more than a decade ago, and that he had held onto it all this time. He felt it would be nice that it went back to its original owner and you know what? He was right.
I'm not a collector or hoarder of old tech gear (the Mac SE/30 is all I have!), but this iPhone in particular has so much sentimental value I didn't realise until I held it my hands again, 18 years after it was ferried to me direct from San Francisco the day it went on sale. Derek even kept the box and all the accessories (remember the iPhone dock?!), plus the original AT&T SIM card. How cool is that?
I scanned in the little "Finger Tips" booklet that came with the iPhone explaining how to use this new magical device and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. This would have been most people's first introduction to a smartphone and this booklet explains concepts that are now taken so for granted that there's no longer a booklet in a new iPhone box.
I haven't used an original iPhone in a long time, probably not since I packed this one away and gave it to Derek. My first reaction using it today was wow, it is small and feels so nice to hold with its smooth, rounded corners. After turning it on I was surprised how slow everything runs on it. Was it always this slow? The keyboard is all caps, all the time. I forgot that's how it looked! The battery even holds a decent charge. Not bad for an 18 year old device.
My memory around exact timelines is fuzzy, but I do remember not being able to do much with it until someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone and activate it outside the USA, then develop a SIM-unlock shim to use a local SIM-card. I also remember having to learn how to do all this really early on so I could use my iPhone as a phone, so I traveled around Melbourne making some cash on the side jailbreaking and unlocking US iPhones for people that found the process difficult.
That period of my life was peak-MacTalk. The site and forum was incredibly popular, with around 40,000 users all frothing for updates on when it would go on sale in Australia, how to use your US-imported iPhone in Australia, the best phone plans with data (a new concept at the time) and so much more.
The 2G network in Australia shut down a few months ago, but wi-fi works fine so I mucked around on the iPhone for 20 minutes doing nothing in particular then took some photos of it. My first iPhone, and one of the very first iPhones ever to go on sale, is now back its box and stored in a safe place ready for whenever I want to reminisce about being young and excited about technology.
This iPhone reminds me of that time in my life, the friends I made, the experiences I had and the people I got to meet. Thanks so much Derek for keeping it safe all these years and being gracious enough to return it to me without me even asking for it.
