ABSTRACT
In 2007, Apple enthusiasts and technology trend-watchers awaited the muchanticipated public release of the Apple iPhone. After Steve Jobs’ unveiled the product at the MacWorld conference in January 2007, a great deal of hype began to circulate across the Web and on the news about the device he promised would “work like magic.” The iPhone combined the power of an iPod, cell phone, and PDA into what Jobs claimed would be “your life in your pocket” (Block, Jan 2007, Engadget). Just hours after Jobs’ public webcast demonstration, the iPhone was touted as the “Jesus phone” in blogging reports. PVP comics online even published a strip featuring “Jade” trying to comfort her boyfriend “Brent” who went catatonic after seeing Apple’s iPhone announcement. The strip concluded with Brent explaining his shock as “Jesus has come back and now he’s a phone” (https://www.pvponline.com/ 2007/01/09/he-has-risen/). In the six months leading up to its official launch, the Jesus phone became a
common characterization of the iPhone for Apple fans, tech bloggers, and even the international press. Some bloggers lauded the Jesus phone as “the holy grail of all gadgets” (Danneskjold, 10 Jan 2007, Jawa Report) and others questioned how other cell phone companies might develop strategies for “dealing with the Second Coming” of the iPhone launch in June 2007 (Matt Buchanan, 12 Jan 2007, Gizmodo). Still other bloggers created images of the divine device, such as a Spanish blogger who used the traditional orthodox icon of Mary but substituted the image of the baby Jesus with an iPhone which Mary seemed to cradle lovingly (https://rafaelpay.typepad.com/rafa/2007/06/ jesus-phone.html). An Asian blogger used a traditional image of the “sacred heart of Jesus” holding an iPhone in his left hand next to his heart (https://www. techible.com/2007/06/news/apple/what-will-happen-on-iphoneday). Descriptions of the iPhone as the Jesus phone were also prevalent in press
coverage. The characterization first appeared in international press accounts such as the Irish Times, commenting that “the ‘Jesus Phone’ – as the iPhone is now witheringly called given its overblown reception” (Butcher, 19 Jan 2007) and later by other papers such as the Canadian National Post (Kinsella, 21 Jun 2007: A23), who critically wrote:
A sampling of the scrupulously-objective reportage now making the rounds, a week or so before the iPhone alights (briefly) on shelves in the continental U.S.: “The iPhone cometh … the day the mute will talk, the deaf will hear and the lame will walk. It will be Christmas in June, New Year’s in summer and Valentine’s Day all rolled into one.
