4 ms·

Not an iPhone user, but Apple entering the smartphone market was a great thing for consumers I believe. Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iterat

by bane 10y ago

Not an iPhone user, but Apple entering the smartphone market was a great thing for consumers I believe. Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iteration of all the other smartphones on the market, it brought Apple's relentless focus on polish as well as business savvy to the market, it also catalyzed Google and a bunch of other companies to jump into the fray once Apple cleared the way with telecom providers. Before the iPhone, carriers billed on individual metrics like bytes transferred or connections to servers, the first few months of iPhone bills were sometimes hundreds of pages long. The real revolution that Apple brought was in forcing carriers to become one step closer to being dumb pipes. It's an agreement that even today no other maker of Smartphone has really quite gotten to with the same companies. Google phones still ship with crapware on them. At the same time, Apple showed structural weaknesses in competitors and exploited them, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, etc. all couldn't build offerings as good as the iPhone and if it weren't for Google we'd very much be using a monoculture of devices these days. At the same time Android devices took a "try it first, try it every which way" approach that has also forced the iPhone to come along kicking and screaming, then putting Apple in a position to integrate some new innovative feature that Android devices don't have, putting them both into a state of perpetual innovation. Consumers win in this and I find it remarkable how many things the little device in my pocket has simply and entirely replaced.

notheguyouthink 10y ago
> Google phones still ship with crapware on them Note, these usually aren't "Google phones", they just happen to have Google's OS on it. Eg, i haven't dealt with crapware on my phone in ~7years, as i don't buy phones from 3rd parties who have incentives to put crapware on the phone. If Apple allowed anyone else to use their OS, i'm sure iPhone would have crapware on it too. Well, unless Apple had a contract that required a clean OS, which i would honestly hope they would - i'm annoyed Google doesn't.
- bane 10y ago
  My phone a couple phones ago was a Nexus on Verizon, it was pretty much stock Android except for a couple pieces of Verizon garbage that ended up on the phone and I couldn't remove without rooting. The next phone, a Samsung Note 3 had Samsung's adoring additions, but less what I'd consider "crapware". My current phone, a Nexus 6p, on Google Fi is pure Android, and finally doesn't have any extra nonsense on it. (I also had a couple other Android phones before these that also had various carrier garbage on them). Apple hasn't allowed this nonsense on their phones ever AFAIK and it's amazing that you can still buy an Android device, or at least a flagship one, that has anything but the stock OS on it. Considering that Android devices are by far more often sold than iOS devices, it's frankly inexcusable at this point.
qznc 10y ago
After 10 years, I still find it hard to say what exactly Apple did back then. It was not about the app store for example, because that came one year later. * They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one. * They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it. * They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC. * At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.
- rwc 10y ago
  Ballmer mocked iPhone as a luxury item at unrealistically high prices because he looked at it as just another smartphone. If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
- petra 10y ago
  I think the iPhone started taking off only after the app store, so it should be counted as a factor. Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.
FabHK 10y ago
> Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iteration of all the other smartphones on the market [...] It was more than that, though. It really pays to watch Steve's introduction of the iPhone in detail, and recall how utter crap "smartphones" were back then, and how innovative the iPhone was. For example: * Multitouch/Scrolling. Yes, other phones had touch screens, but they often relied on pen, and mimicked traditional desktop OSes. To scroll, you had to press the little triangle on the bottom or top of the scrollbar. In the presentation, Steve has to explain how to scroll through the contact list by, well, just flicking through it - that was a new gesture back then. Similarly, pinch to zoom in/out was a new thing. * Fully featured web browser. You basically couldn't browse the web on a smartphone back then, period. There was this protocol for mobile web, WAP, but it was crap and not widely available anyways. * Syncing. There were decent PDAs, but integration with the desktop (contacts, calendar) was mediocre. When someone had a phone lost or stolen, you'd get these emails "Please text me your phone numbers again". And, as with the iPod before, you could trivially sync your music/photos/etc. via iTunes.
- devopsproject 10y ago
  > Multitouch/Scrolling The bigger leap was from resistive to capacitive screens which ultimately allowed for multitouch and great scrolling feel. Many credit card machines still use resistive screens which is why it is so unnatural and awkward to sign > Fully featured web browser Probably the biggest innovation > Syncing It could sync but many things required iTunes which sucked Also, the original iPhone lacked things like MMS and, for some unknown reason, a proper call history screen.
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    iTunes on Windows sucked. iTunes on the Mac was really stable and really well organized. I don't know how they let iTunes for Windows out in that state, but holy crap was it a mess compared to what everyone on the Mac was used to.

by bane 10y ago

notheguyouthink 10y ago

> Google phones still ship with crapware on them Note, these usually aren't "Google phones", they just happen to have Google's OS on it. Eg, i haven't dealt with crapware on my phone in ~7years, as i don't buy phones from 3rd parties who have incentives to put crapware on the phone. If Apple allowed anyone else to use their OS, i'm sure iPhone would have crapware on it too. Well, unless Apple had a contract that required a clean OS, which i would honestly hope they would - i'm annoyed Google doesn't.

bane 10y ago
My phone a couple phones ago was a Nexus on Verizon, it was pretty much stock Android except for a couple pieces of Verizon garbage that ended up on the phone and I couldn't remove without rooting. The next phone, a Samsung Note 3 had Samsung's adoring additions, but less what I'd consider "crapware". My current phone, a Nexus 6p, on Google Fi is pure Android, and finally doesn't have any extra nonsense on it. (I also had a couple other Android phones before these that also had various carrier garbage on them). Apple hasn't allowed this nonsense on their phones ever AFAIK and it's amazing that you can still buy an Android device, or at least a flagship one, that has anything but the stock OS on it. Considering that Android devices are by far more often sold than iOS devices, it's frankly inexcusable at this point.

qznc 10y ago

After 10 years, I still find it hard to say what exactly Apple did back then. It was not about the app store for example, because that came one year later. * They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one. * They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it. * They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC. * At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.

rwc 10y ago
Ballmer mocked iPhone as a luxury item at unrealistically high prices because he looked at it as just another smartphone. If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
petra 10y ago
I think the iPhone started taking off only after the app store, so it should be counted as a factor. Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.

FabHK 10y ago

> Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iteration of all the other smartphones on the market [...] It was more than that, though. It really pays to watch Steve's introduction of the iPhone in detail, and recall how utter crap "smartphones" were back then, and how innovative the iPhone was. For example: * Multitouch/Scrolling. Yes, other phones had touch screens, but they often relied on pen, and mimicked traditional desktop OSes. To scroll, you had to press the little triangle on the bottom or top of the scrollbar. In the presentation, Steve has to explain how to scroll through the contact list by, well, just flicking through it - that was a new gesture back then. Similarly, pinch to zoom in/out was a new thing. * Fully featured web browser. You basically couldn't browse the web on a smartphone back then, period. There was this protocol for mobile web, WAP, but it was crap and not widely available anyways. * Syncing. There were decent PDAs, but integration with the desktop (contacts, calendar) was mediocre. When someone had a phone lost or stolen, you'd get these emails "Please text me your phone numbers again". And, as with the iPod before, you could trivially sync your music/photos/etc. via iTunes.

devopsproject 10y ago
> Multitouch/Scrolling The bigger leap was from resistive to capacitive screens which ultimately allowed for multitouch and great scrolling feel. Many credit card machines still use resistive screens which is why it is so unnatural and awkward to sign > Fully featured web browser Probably the biggest innovation > Syncing It could sync but many things required iTunes which sucked Also, the original iPhone lacked things like MMS and, for some unknown reason, a proper call history screen.
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  iTunes on Windows sucked. iTunes on the Mac was really stable and really well organized. I don't know how they let iTunes for Windows out in that state, but holy crap was it a mess compared to what everyone on the Mac was used to.