When iPhone launched it was targeted at the general public.

Blackberry had successfully dominated the businesses. In apps, texting, e-mailing etc they were light-years ahead of everyone else at the time. Ther had a bit of a learning curve to figure out but it got the job done. Many of the things that the iPhone became famous for were blackberry inventions. They were also highly customizable with tons of options where you could tweak all sorts of stuff aka pretty complicated.

So Apple went after the consumer market where they had a major fan base built up from the iPod. The thing about the iPod that set it apart from other MP3 was it was extremely simple to use. Like your 50 year old MBA boss could use it simple (if someone loaded the MP3’s for him) and no customization.

So the phone they made was about the same size as an iPod, and extremely simply to use. No customization because that created complexity. It was all tightly controlled.

Pretty soon it became the dominant phone in the market because as the current president shows, too many americans are fucking stupid. It remains the dominant phone because too many americans are fucking stupid.

It’s a much more complex phone today but don’t worry, most americans don’t know how to use all the features anyway because they are too fucking stupid.