this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Doesn’t mean the iPhone wasn’t revolutionary.
I was (and still am) a mobile app developer at the time. We had every major phone on the market in our office for testing purposes. Literally hundreds of different phones. You name any popular (and less popular) phone on the market at that time and I can guarantee you I’ve used it extensively.
The iPhone was absolutely revolutionary. However, it wasn’t because of a specific piece of technology, it was execution.
Symbian touch-screen phones existed, they were slow and laggy. The UI was nothing like the iPhone, which is built around directly manipulating UI elements with your finger. It seems obvious now, but back then it wasn’t. You could use the touch screen to manipulate a tiny scrollbar.
The closest thing to the iPhone was the LG Prada (KE850), which had a capacitive touch screen and the same scrolling mechanism as iPhone. However, it was small, had a tiny screen and was relatively slow. The software was also very limited, it was basically a feature phone, not a smartphone.
The iPhone was basically the first phone that got all of it right.
It was absolutely a revolution.
The relevant definition of revolution: “a dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes, or operation.”
It didn’t matter if the technology already existed, hardly anyone was using it. Capacitive touchscreens existed, but there was no dramatic change, they were just used in the same way as resistive touchscreens. It was a different way of building a touchscreen, but very much an evolutionary change.
The iPhone was a revolution because it caused a dramatic and almost overnight change in the industry. What techies usually fail to see it that technology doesn’t matter. What matters is how it is used and what it allows people to do.
Apple coined the term App with the introduction of the App Store. They weren't called that before the iPhone. That's how influential the iPhone and its ecosystem were.
I can't stand Apple's ecosystem, but pretending like it wasn't a major shift is just weird.
Apple did not invent the term "app", "app store", or the concept of an app store. There was an app store called App Store for NeXT in 1991 that Jobs knew about, and many similar systems in the intervening years.
The only thing different about Apple's app store was the restriction on users' ability to install apps from other sources.
Jobs was great at business, not at tech.
NeXt was founded by jobs when he got kicked out of apple. Then, apple acquired NeXT, and jobs once again became CEO. So NeXT was basically jobs throwing a fit. I’d consider them basically apple.
I'm aware of the history, but I don't think you understood what I wrote. An app store was written for NeXT by an independent company, without Jobs' involvement.
Would you give credit to Bill Gates for all windows software written while he was CEO?
Sorry the “that jobs knew about” made it seem like apple stole it from NeXT. I was just saying that of course he knew about. It was a company he started and ran because he was mad at Pepsi.
My point was just that NeXT having something is just like apple having something in my opinion.
Mad at Pepsi? Haha that's a funny way to put it. He got fired when he butted heads with Sculley, the former PepsiCo president, that he had hired, and the board sided with Sculley.
Giving credit to Apple/NeXT for software made by a different company is creative. The same logic applied to Microsoft makes things interesting.
The iPhone was an incredibly obvious idea to follow up the iPod.
LOL no it wasn’t.
Sure, the idea of an apple phone had been out there for a while, but the actual device wasn’t obvious at all. Just look at all the speculation before the event, people making mockups of what they thought the iPhone would look like. Just look at the industry reactions afterwards.
For example, the reaction of blackberry founder Mike Lazaridis
Or the reaction from the people at Google working on Android
It was absolutely revolutionary at the time. The fact that the way it works seems obvious after the fact is testament to how good and revolutionary it actually was. We can’t even imagine things working differently anymore, but it was only obvious after it was revealed.
Wow bro you think I'm going to read all that bullshit? Lol. I'm not some genius and even I saw the iPhone coming back then. It was totally obvious if you spent any time thinking about the iPod at all.
Yeah no. The iPhone looks nothing like an iPod, and no one else predicted anything like the iPhone. But hey, you obviously thought of it.
Even the people working on Android at that time had nothing like it. Initially Android was going to be a lot like a Blackberry. They had to go back to the drawing board after the iPhone announcement. What a shame that Google didn't have a brilliant mind like you working for them, they could have saved all that time and money and worked on the 'obvious' design from day one.