As we celebrate 10 years of the iPhone this week, Josh Centers describes an interesting new offer from Virgin Mobile in an article for TidBITS. Virgin Mobile is the first carrier to go iPhone-exclusive. And to get some attention for going iPhone-only, for the next month, if you purchase an iPhone from Virgin Mobile, you can get 12 months of service for just a dollar. And after that, it is only $50 a month. And that's for unlimited talk, text and data. Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint, so make sure that Sprint service is adequate in your area, but if it is, this is the best iPhone deal I've ever seen. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball does a great job explaining how the iPhone changed the world. "The iPhone was the product Apple had been founded to create — the epitome of everything both of Apple’s founding Steves stood for and obsessed about. The home run of all home runs."
- Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée shares some mind-numbing statistics associated with the insane number of iPhones sold during the first ten years along with other insightful thoughts on Apple.
- In a video for the Wall Street Journal, former Apple executives Scott Forstall, Tony Fadell and Greg Christie discuss the origin of the iPhone. It's a fantastic video with lots of inside information on how the iPhone came to be. I highly recommend it.
- Rich Stevens has a funny comic strip for iMore congratulating the iPhone on turning 10.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac traces the significant events in iPhone history over the last 10 years.
- I often think of my iPhone as my second brain, remembering the things that I could never remember, such as all of my passwords. (Which reminds me, you need to hurry up to take advantage of the 1Password offer before it expires!) But according to an article by Christopher Bergland in Psychology Today, a study showed that brain power is reduced when your iPhone is close by. It looks like an interesting study, but I could only skim it because I was also using Twitter on my iPhone.
- Joseph Keller of iMore reports that Cisco unveiled Security Connector this week, software that gives large companies more control over iPhones and iPads and increases security.
- Abdel Ibrahim of WatchAware reports that apps should run faster and be more responsive in the next version of the operating system, watchOS 4.
- Dan Moren of Six Colors shows and describes the current beta of iOS 11.
- Ben Patterson offers some Safari tips in an article for Macworld.
- Michael Brown of TechHive writes an extensive review of the Eero Home WiFi System 2, which provides WiFi throughout your house using mesh networking.
- Earlier this month, Apple posted an amazing video called Earth featuring videos shot on iPhones, with narration by Carl Sagan from his book Pale Blue Dot.
- And finally, Joanna Stern created a fun video showing, from a first person perspective, what it is like to try to use the original, first generation iPhone in 2017. Amazing how far we have come:
