In Pictures: Five years ago they said the iPhone would be a flop ... Now?

Before the iPhone was a smash

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, not everyone came away thinking that he held in his hand the future of the mobile phone. In fact, before the iPhone hit retail stores on June 29 -- five years ago Friday -- pundits had written scathing assessments that predicted the iPhone would be a failure, a flop, a messy egg on the forehead of Apple and Jobs.

Over the past few days, I've reached out to some of these prognosticators via email and asked: "What do you have to say for yourself?" The good sports replied -- including a colorful mea-culpa-tinged, Apple-bashing rant from John ("Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone") Dvorak.