Let’s step into a time machine and travel through the mists of chronos to an ancient yesteryear. It was a different era, Britney Spears shaved her head, Boris Yeltsin died, and people learned how to print images on toast from the comfort of their own workshops. Oh, and a lil’ thing called an iPhone came out. The year was 2007, and Verizon and Sprint were so scared that they issued these ridiculous sheets to their frontline reps with talking points for discouraging people from buying an iPhone:

VERIZON: [AppleInsider]

“Touch screen: It sounds cool, but if you’re a heavy text or email user, it could be challenging not being able to feel the keys as you press them. And how are you going to type without looking with a keyboard you can’t even feel.”
“Sorry, iPhone can’t send picture or video message — only e-mail. No over-the-air downloads. You have to connect to a PC to load music.”
“Wi-Fi is not a mobile technology. You have to be in a fixed location to use it — and that’s if you know where to find it. And some Wi-Fi hotspots make you pay to use them. There’re also those pesky concerns about security of Wi-Fi.”

SPRINT [AppleInsider] (PDF)

“The iPhone is an Apple product and has some nice features. It also has a nice price. Do you really need all those features in one device?”
“Are you sure 4G or 8G is enough storage for you? To give you a comparison, most iPods/MP3 players hold 40 to 60Gigs or more.”
“Using the iPhone on the GSM/EDGE network may be like having a really powerful computer on dial up.”

Ok, that last one turned out to be true.

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