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The phone makers at the time really had no idea how to make a full-featured mobile computer OS. Nothing happened until Apple giving them a kick and Google saved

The phone makers at the time really had no idea how to make a full-featured mobile computer OS. Nothing happened until Apple giving them a kick and Google saved their butts by handing them Android on a platter.

monort 11y ago
You are forgetting about Windows Mobile for Smartphone and Symbian. There was a reason to expect smartphone revolution - because early adopters had smartphones in 2004.
- simonh 11y ago
  Yes, but they were utter crap. Their browsers were crippled, side-loading software was strictly for geek hobbyists only and their apps were generally appallingly designed. Mobile internet was restricted by the carriers to a teletext-style menu driven system with menu space sold to the highest bidder. It was awful. They had no idea what they ere doing. Mobile payments were supposed to take over the world in 2001+. The carriers have spent the last 14 years utterly failing to execute on that, and even in 2004 they'd spent the previous 3+ years being utterly incompetent. Steve saw what was going on, and he was completely correct that even 5 years wasn't going to be long enough to sort all that out.
  - radicalbyte 11y ago
    That was WAP. Windows Mobile back then had a fully featured browser. It was all pen driven, but it actually worked really well. The first iPhone seemed like a step back at least as far as the browser is concerned. Data was just extremely expensive, but it was faster than the dial-up internet most of the country was still stuck with back in 2004.
    - addicted 11y ago
      "It was all pen driven, but it actually worked really well." Steve Jobs was right in that no one wanted to use a pen (stylus). As the market matures, this is changing, and the stylus is regaining importance at least in certain niche areas. However, for the vast majority of the mass market, your statement was, and still is, a contradiction.
      - radicalbyte 11y ago
        I said that it worked well back then. I didn't say anything about the mass market. So I didn't contradict myself. I think that you skim-read my post ;) But, on the subject of the "mass market"... What Apple/Jobs did was build an awesome device for media consumption. Up until then we'd been talking about the PDA - a productivity device. It needed a physical keyboard and stylus input to make it "productive". The best PDA up until then was the Palm Pilot - it has exceptional writing recognition - if you spent two hours learning their alphabet. It works for email, spreadsheets. Battery life was excellent. Most people I know used it with a fold-out keyboard when traveling. Apple realized that 99% of the time you'll using your phone to play games, read, listen to music or watch videos. Their touch screen was fantastic - it took just seconds to learn how to use it. Sure, writing emails was a pain (even with the smart keyboards), but you'd only do that rarely. So yeah, you're kind of right: no-one whose main use-case is content consumption is going to want to use a stylus. For content creators however a well-implemented stylus is a big sell. That's why Microsoft are throwing so much weight behind the Surface Pro, and it's also the main reason people are buying it.
        jp555 11y ago
        It takes me 100x less effort to shoot, edit, & upload a photo or video using an iPhone compared to the first $8000 Adobe Premiere PC rig I used to learn video editing, let alone comparing to the nearly useless PDAs (in this regard) of their day (and I loved my Palm Pilots & Visors). Voice-to-text transcription today is immensely easier & more accurate than writing with Graffiti input. Instagram alone is evidence that there are immense numbers of people creating massive amounts of content on their touchscreen smartphones. Spreadsheets are super-niche content. Text, photos, & video are mainstream content. Compared to email on the desktop during the PDA era, I'd bet people communicate with other people much much more now via their smartphones, whether that's through email, social networks, instant messaging, or video chat.
        xorcist 11y ago
        The reason iPhone was designed for this usage pattern probably has to do with the iPod, with which they owned mobile music consumption for half a decade. A PDA would have been a radical re-think. Fans wanted a phone in there since day one. The only reason it took them six years to do it was Jobs commitment to getting it exactly right (or "his way" if you wish) which meant technology had to become available.
    - billyhoffman 11y ago
      Windows Mobile had a start button! Microsoft was literally shoving a desktop mindset into any form factor, and not designing for a form factor. Windows Mobile sucked not because of WAP, but because you had to use it like a tiny desktop UI and poke at it with a tiny stylus to move a mouse cursor (depending onthe version). The iPhone wasn't awesome because it had a "full" web browser or whatever (though it helped). The iPhone was awesome because it was a pocket sized super computer with a UI/interaction model that actually worked
      - ascagnel_ 11y ago
        WM6, when designed to knock off Blackberry devices, was a little better. The "Start" button brought you to an application tray, and it had a 4-way rocker (and optional resistive, stylus-input touchscreen) for navigation. MS took some obvious hints from RIM, but they did deliver a good product. Of course, it released roughly seven months before the iPhone, which beat the pants off of it. At least it could play NetHack...
    - Tloewald 11y ago
      I tried two generations of Windows Mobile devices. Aside from anything else their battery life was abysmal, and when they ran out of juice they failed pretty catastrophically.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      No, that was in 1999. The mobile browsers in 2005 were built on Webkit (originally from KDE), and had identical rendering as the iPhone. The latter came with a better zoom, but it was the flent UI that caused the greatest stir.
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  ...and there was a browser on the Apple Newton (and, I'm sure, others) a decade before that and Steve Jobs (and, I'm sure, others) talking about developing smartphones a decade before that. It took >23 years of iteration, not 3 years of iteration, to finally reach a hw+sw+service combination compelling enough to actually revolutionize the industry.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nerdcity 11y ago
Poor Palm :(

monort 11y ago

You are forgetting about Windows Mobile for Smartphone and Symbian. There was a reason to expect smartphone revolution - because early adopters had smartphones in 2004.

simonh 11y ago
Yes, but they were utter crap. Their browsers were crippled, side-loading software was strictly for geek hobbyists only and their apps were generally appallingly designed. Mobile internet was restricted by the carriers to a teletext-style menu driven system with menu space sold to the highest bidder. It was awful. They had no idea what they ere doing. Mobile payments were supposed to take over the world in 2001+. The carriers have spent the last 14 years utterly failing to execute on that, and even in 2004 they'd spent the previous 3+ years being utterly incompetent. Steve saw what was going on, and he was completely correct that even 5 years wasn't going to be long enough to sort all that out.
- radicalbyte 11y ago
  That was WAP. Windows Mobile back then had a fully featured browser. It was all pen driven, but it actually worked really well. The first iPhone seemed like a step back at least as far as the browser is concerned. Data was just extremely expensive, but it was faster than the dial-up internet most of the country was still stuck with back in 2004.
  - addicted 11y ago
    "It was all pen driven, but it actually worked really well." Steve Jobs was right in that no one wanted to use a pen (stylus). As the market matures, this is changing, and the stylus is regaining importance at least in certain niche areas. However, for the vast majority of the mass market, your statement was, and still is, a contradiction.
    - radicalbyte 11y ago
      I said that it worked well back then. I didn't say anything about the mass market. So I didn't contradict myself. I think that you skim-read my post ;) But, on the subject of the "mass market"... What Apple/Jobs did was build an awesome device for media consumption. Up until then we'd been talking about the PDA - a productivity device. It needed a physical keyboard and stylus input to make it "productive". The best PDA up until then was the Palm Pilot - it has exceptional writing recognition - if you spent two hours learning their alphabet. It works for email, spreadsheets. Battery life was excellent. Most people I know used it with a fold-out keyboard when traveling. Apple realized that 99% of the time you'll using your phone to play games, read, listen to music or watch videos. Their touch screen was fantastic - it took just seconds to learn how to use it. Sure, writing emails was a pain (even with the smart keyboards), but you'd only do that rarely. So yeah, you're kind of right: no-one whose main use-case is content consumption is going to want to use a stylus. For content creators however a well-implemented stylus is a big sell. That's why Microsoft are throwing so much weight behind the Surface Pro, and it's also the main reason people are buying it.
      - jp555 11y ago
        It takes me 100x less effort to shoot, edit, & upload a photo or video using an iPhone compared to the first $8000 Adobe Premiere PC rig I used to learn video editing, let alone comparing to the nearly useless PDAs (in this regard) of their day (and I loved my Palm Pilots & Visors). Voice-to-text transcription today is immensely easier & more accurate than writing with Graffiti input. Instagram alone is evidence that there are immense numbers of people creating massive amounts of content on their touchscreen smartphones. Spreadsheets are super-niche content. Text, photos, & video are mainstream content. Compared to email on the desktop during the PDA era, I'd bet people communicate with other people much much more now via their smartphones, whether that's through email, social networks, instant messaging, or video chat.
      - xorcist 11y ago
        The reason iPhone was designed for this usage pattern probably has to do with the iPod, with which they owned mobile music consumption for half a decade. A PDA would have been a radical re-think. Fans wanted a phone in there since day one. The only reason it took them six years to do it was Jobs commitment to getting it exactly right (or "his way" if you wish) which meant technology had to become available.
  - billyhoffman 11y ago
    Windows Mobile had a start button! Microsoft was literally shoving a desktop mindset into any form factor, and not designing for a form factor. Windows Mobile sucked not because of WAP, but because you had to use it like a tiny desktop UI and poke at it with a tiny stylus to move a mouse cursor (depending onthe version). The iPhone wasn't awesome because it had a "full" web browser or whatever (though it helped). The iPhone was awesome because it was a pocket sized super computer with a UI/interaction model that actually worked
    - ascagnel_ 11y ago
      WM6, when designed to knock off Blackberry devices, was a little better. The "Start" button brought you to an application tray, and it had a 4-way rocker (and optional resistive, stylus-input touchscreen) for navigation. MS took some obvious hints from RIM, but they did deliver a good product. Of course, it released roughly seven months before the iPhone, which beat the pants off of it. At least it could play NetHack...
  - Tloewald 11y ago
    I tried two generations of Windows Mobile devices. Aside from anything else their battery life was abysmal, and when they ran out of juice they failed pretty catastrophically.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    No, that was in 1999. The mobile browsers in 2005 were built on Webkit (originally from KDE), and had identical rendering as the iPhone. The latter came with a better zoom, but it was the flent UI that caused the greatest stir.
jjoonathan 11y ago
...and there was a browser on the Apple Newton (and, I'm sure, others) a decade before that and Steve Jobs (and, I'm sure, others) talking about developing smartphones a decade before that. It took >23 years of iteration, not 3 years of iteration, to finally reach a hw+sw+service combination compelling enough to actually revolutionize the industry.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nerdcity 11y ago

Poor Palm :(