Steve Jobs’ regret?

It was 10 years ago January 9th.

On that day in 2007, the late Steve Jobs made one of the greatest new product introductions in history.

Had he been alive today, he may have regretted it.

The stunning iPhone and its quick and ubiquitous copies from Samsung, Google, Microsoft, etc., made what was already established on the internet that much more potent. Texting exploded because of how easy it was. Facebook and YouTube came to the phone. Instagram and sexting were next.

Texting while driving skyrocketed, leading to national campaigns to prevent deaths from it. Selfies barely existed pre-iPhone, now they are omnipresent. Selfie-sticks and complaints about selfies at funerals came next. If there is no picture, were you ever really there?

A rise followed in online bullying. An 18-year-old Texas girl just shot herself in front of her family in December in the latest suicide connected to it. College counselors across the country report increased depression in the last decade, citing “FOMO” as a contributor - “Fear of Missing Out.” Another element that existed pre-iPhone, but flared with it.

Jobs and his wife strictly limited their kids' screen time.

Like Robert Oppenheimer regretted his participation in the Manhattan Project, could Jobs have come to think that about the iPhone?

For workers, expected to always be in contact in the Blackberry era, it got worse with the iPhone. A new French law just went into effect affirming the right of employees in off-hours to not be in contact with the office.

Less total interaction among people is here.

We’re more connected to a narrow band of friends and family, but less so to people in general.

Asking a person for directions has become odd. Why wouldn't you look it up on your phone?

In late 2010, Jobs told a New York Times reporter that his kids had not even used the iPad, months after it first came out.

Our lives now are generally less organic. Go to a family gathering at a home and you rarely hear a phone ring. It's just silent texts going to individuals. Go to a convention or other large event and the amount of people walled off by screens is noticeable.

As Jobs said to Paul McCartney one time when the musician suggested to him, “I bet you're proud of all you've done.”

“I'm more proud of the things I haven't done,” Jobs replied.

Is this one item he may have preferred in the other column?

If the iPhone had never been invented, another company likely would have done it later, as technology for the screen features was bought by Apple from a separate source.

In the end, what a product, but it may not have been this man to do it.

“Every evening, Steve made a point of having dinner at the big, long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,” said Walter Isaacson, author of the biography “Steve Jobs.” “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted to all the devices.”

Plenty of good uses can be found for the iPhone.

People now sit in your house with their phone on the armrest.

Steve Jobs died four years into what became this new era. Now we're at 10. What would he have thought?

Garth Meyer,

Gazette Reporter