The iPhone turns 10 years old in 2017. For the occasion, Apple is rumored to be adding significant new features for the model to be released this year. Whatever those may be, they are not likely to have the same impact that the release of the original iPhone had 10 years ago. That event led to a radical new vision for the design and capability of mobile devices. Within a short period of time, there was an industry shake-up, with Windows and Blackberry phones, the erstwhile smartphone leaders, being reduced to insignificance, along with digital music players (including Apple's own iPod) and personal digital assistants (PDAs). The original iPhone also spawned a new mobile device industry through its big brother, the iPad. Competing products, inspired by Apple touchscreen devices, soon appeared, notably Android phones and later Chromebooks. These products, in particular, have had a major impact on education, as they have made largely affordable the advanced features introduced by Apple. In this column we will be looking at what these devices have meant for language learning and literacy education. I will be arguing that the Apple-inspired touchscreen smartphone is not just another technological innovation, but rather a device that has ushered in a new era in the human-machine relationship and that, thereby, it has the potential (not yet realized) of fundamentally disrupting teaching and learning, including L1 and L2 literacies and learning.