iPhone OS 1 is the first major release of

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

's mobile operating system. It was released on June 29, 2007 alongside with the

first-generation iPhone The first-generation iPhone is the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. After years of rumors and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Develo ...

. It was succeeded by

iPhone OS 2 iPhone OS 2 is the second major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iPhone OS 1. It was the first version of iOS to support third-party applications via the App Store. iPhone OS 2.2.1 is ...

on July 11, 2008.

History

Development history

Development of iPhone OS 1.0 and the first generation of iPhone hardware was a combined effort. Only employees from within Apple were allowed to be a part of the iPhone development team. It was a completely secret project and at the time when the team was selected, even they weren't told what they were going to be working on. There were two teams inside Apple that worked on creating the iPhone: one worked on converting the iPod into a phone and the other worked on compressing the Mac OS X operating system to make it work on smaller devices like phones. A team led by

Jon Rubinstein Jonathan J. "Jon" Rubinstein (born October 1956) is an American electrical engineer who played an instrumental role in the development of the iMac and iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001. He le ...

worked on developing a lightweight

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

-based version, commonly referred to as Acorn, while another team led by

Scott Forstall Scott James Forstall (born August 28, 1969) is an American software engineer, known for leading the original software development team for the iPhone and iPad. Having spent his career first at NeXT and then Apple, he was the senior vice president ...

worked on developing a more compressed and streamlined version of Mac OS X, codenamed purple, to run on the ARM chipset. Tony Fadell, who then led the iPhone team said "It was a completing set of ideas, not teams, and we were all working on it". There were 16 to 17 different concepts. Many people on the team were still hung up on the idea that everyone would want to type on a hardware keyboard, not glass. The idea of introducing a complete touch screen was very novel to everyone. Many user interfaces were prototyped, including the multi-touch click-wheel. Although many thought it was a waste of time, Apple CEO

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

insisted on prototyping all concepts/ideas before the Mac OS X-based version of the operating system was selected.

Introduction and release

iPhone OS was introduced at the

Macworld Conference & Expo Macworld/iWorld (originally Macworld) was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to Apple's Mac platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conf ...

at the Moscone Convention Center in

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, in a keynote address by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, along with the original iPhone. At the time, Jobs only said the iPhone "runs OS X", and according to ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...

'' columnist

Andy Ihnatko Andy Ihnatko (born November 18, 1967) is an American tech author and former technology journalist for the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. He resides in Massachusetts. He is a co-host on the Material podcast, on Relay FM's network. He also appears on Leo ...

, this was confirmed in official briefings and unofficial conversations. iPhone OS 1.0 was released alongside the

original iPhone The first-generation iPhone is the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. After years of rumors and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Develo ...

, on June 29, 2007. The iPhone OS 1.1.3 update cost $19.95 for

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

users.

Apps

iPhone OS 1 did not have any

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

or a Software Development Kit (SDK) for third-party developers to create native applications. Instead, Apple directed developers to create web apps which could be accessed from

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

Supported devices

iPhone (1st generation) The first-generation iPhone is the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. After years of rumors and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Devel ...

* iPod Touch (1st generation)

Version history

References

External links

* {{Apple *1 2007 software Products introduced in 2007 Mobile operating systems Proprietary operating systems