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Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Furthermore if you have a good idea the odds are extremely high that someone else has had the same id

Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Furthermore if you have a good idea the odds are extremely high that someone else has had the same idea. "Inventions" are almost never worth the name. Things generally follow a natural progression (at least in technology): 1. Some wild-eyed visionaries (sometimes from academia) come up with crazy visions of what computing might be like in the future. This vision is usually highly impractical, requiring vastly more compute power or vastly cheaper components than exist. Further the software is the quality you'd expect from academic professors (garbage) and barely works for a few minor demos. This is the pre-prototype phase. 2. Someone brings a more realistic version to market. Sometimes the first to market fails badly because they arrive too soon. The product is too limited or the market isn't ready yet. 3. Finally someone brings a version of the invention to market that is a sellable product. What matters is execution. Ericsson had a touch screen phone? So what. In high-school in the late 90s I had a PocketPC predating the Ericsson phone; it was fucking obvious back then that they'd add a cellular radio to it as soon as it became practical (I know, I carried a Windows Mobile phone for a while). They were all garbage. They took no risks. They didn't have the animation or feedback systems that made iOS so pleasant to use. None of them even pretended to offer a real web browser - it was WAP if anything. Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. There's a good reason the engineers at Blackberry thought the iPhone was a faked demo. There's a good reason Apple waltz in and completely upended and transformed the cellular industry. Of course this all ignores that Apple had the Newton because it doesn't matter who had something first. It matters who can productize that thing and sell it to customers for money.

Nullabillity 11y ago
> They didn't have the animation or feedback systems that made iOS so pleasant to use. Yay, glitter is the only thing that matters! > None of them even pretended to offer a real web browser - it was WAP if anything. Worked fine from what I remember. > Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. > They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? > They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices?
- sbuk 11y ago
  >> They didn't have the animation or feedback systems that made iOS so pleasant to use. > Yay, glitter is the only thing that matters! That's not what that statement says at all. Modes of interaction need refining. Apple have been doing it for a while. When it was released, it was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. >> None of them even pretended to offer a real web browser - it was WAP if anything. >Worked fine from what I remember. Confirmation bias in full right there. WAP was/is terrible. >> Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. >At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. You are probably the only individual alive that is going to argue for resistive, probably because Apple... >> They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. >iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? So the early versions of Windows/Mac OS/Amiga etc weren't desktop OS's? Now you are being ridiculous. >> They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. >As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices? Really? Arguably, Apple sell software at a low price to attract users to it's hardware!
  - Nullabillity 11y ago
    >>> Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. >>At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. >You are probably the only individual alive that is going to argue for resistive, probably because Apple... Have you ever used a resistive screen? But of course, who would ever use a stylus to hit ridiculously small targets without having to zoom in... >>> They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. >>iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? >So the early versions of Windows/Mac OS/Amiga etc weren't desktop OS's? Now you are being ridiculous. Why does it matter that it's based on something that's ran on a desktop machine, if all the features that define modern desktop OSes are hidden/removed? Other than that it's just a form factor and a meaningless label. >>> They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. >>As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices? >Really? Arguably, Apple sell software at a low price to attract users to it's hardware! They sell an arbitrary pick of software at a ridiculous markup. But of course, that's great when Apple does it, and terrible when anyone else does!

Nullabillity 11y ago

> They didn't have the animation or feedback systems that made iOS so pleasant to use. Yay, glitter is the only thing that matters! > None of them even pretended to offer a real web browser - it was WAP if anything. Worked fine from what I remember. > Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. > They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? > They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices?

sbuk 11y ago
>> They didn't have the animation or feedback systems that made iOS so pleasant to use. > Yay, glitter is the only thing that matters! That's not what that statement says at all. Modes of interaction need refining. Apple have been doing it for a while. When it was released, it was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. >> None of them even pretended to offer a real web browser - it was WAP if anything. >Worked fine from what I remember. Confirmation bias in full right there. WAP was/is terrible. >> Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. >At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. You are probably the only individual alive that is going to argue for resistive, probably because Apple... >> They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. >iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? So the early versions of Windows/Mac OS/Amiga etc weren't desktop OS's? Now you are being ridiculous. >> They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. >As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices? Really? Arguably, Apple sell software at a low price to attract users to it's hardware!
- Nullabillity 11y ago
  >>> Everything before the iPhone was qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, even if it happened to have a janky plastic touch screen. >>At least it wasn't the capacitive junk that all of them are now. >You are probably the only individual alive that is going to argue for resistive, probably because Apple... Have you ever used a resistive screen? But of course, who would ever use a stylus to hit ridiculously small targets without having to zoom in... >>> They sure as hell weren't running slimmed down desktop operating systems with fully-featured frameworks. >>iOS is definitely not a desktop OS. Where are the files? Multi-user support? Terminal? >So the early versions of Windows/Mac OS/Amiga etc weren't desktop OS's? Now you are being ridiculous. Why does it matter that it's based on something that's ran on a desktop machine, if all the features that define modern desktop OSes are hidden/removed? Other than that it's just a form factor and a meaningless label. >>> They ran whatever software your carrier deigned to offer at vastly inflated prices. >>As opposed to whatever software Apple deigns to offer at vastly inflated prices? >Really? Arguably, Apple sell software at a low price to attract users to it's hardware! They sell an arbitrary pick of software at a ridiculous markup. But of course, that's great when Apple does it, and terrible when anyone else does!