I had an iPhone on launch day. Compared to phones of today it wasn’t great, but compared to some of the phones it was replacing, it was fantastic. I was coming from a Moto Razr, so it was pretty much better in every way. For the smart phones of the day, there were a lot of things they could technically do on paper, but no one did, because they were too clunky to use. The iPhone solved this. The features it did have were a joy to use and easy to figure out and discover.

There were also some pretty easy jailbreaks after not too long, which allowed for 3rd party apps before Apple had an official store.

I think the only things holding back the original iPhone were the price and production volume. As I remember, it sold out quickly. And everywhere I went people were every interested in it. The guys selling cell phones at the mall were trying to stop me to see it, a girl at the bar said having that was better than a puppy. Pulling it out to use it was like being a celebrity, everyone started paying attention and trying to get close to it; it was a very strange time. I don’t recall anyone saying they didn’t want it due to a lack of features, other than people online looking for clicks or who had a history of Apple criticism.

It's going to be a typical new category release for Apple where v1 has some very obvious flaws that prevent it from mass market penetration, which quickly get cleaned up in v2.

But I'm talking more like culturally / philosophically, I don't think Steve Jobs would have marketed it this way or wanted it framed this way. To that point I'm not sure he'd have green lighted the product at all. It can be very dystopian. The silly eyes thing seems like someone along the way realized that and is trying to mitigate it poorly.