Excerpt:

A memorable image from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign showed the future president, reclined on a couch. His chief campaign strategist David Axelrod appears in the foreground, and “Change we can believe in” signs rest casually in the back. In then-Senator Obama’s left hand, he holds a sheet of paper. In his right, a BlackBerry.

Obama was famously attached to the device. (Back in 2008, the iPhone was a year old, and the BlackBerry was hardly outmoded or uncool.) Just after the election, The New York Times reported that recordkeeping requirements might force Obama to relinquish his beloved device. Eventually, a compromise allowed him to “keep his cherished gadget.”

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