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Apple did a great job engineering the iPhone. They really killed it, no doubt. That being said, I think that Apple was the only company that could have invented

Apple did a great job engineering the iPhone. They really killed it, no doubt. That being said, I think that Apple was the only company that could have invented the iPhone in the mid-2000s, because of their high degree of vertical integration. They were the only company that had a completely proprietary computer system for which they developed the hardware and software. Also, I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable. Cell phones were becoming little computers and giving them little keyboards was a problem, because there wasn't enough space. If you figure that little keyboards were a dead end, then about the only remaining option was to use a touch screen. Other companies could have started working on the touch screen, but they didn't have an operating system. I believe Apple was in a unique position to create the iPhone.

rjsw 9y ago
Handspring could have left the keyboard off the Treo, their earlier PDAs were much closer in style to the iPhone.
kalleboo 9y ago
Other phone vendors also felt tantalizingly close, but they were all busy optimizing their local maxima without making that final "finger-controlled" breakthrough. I remember using a Sony Ericsson Symbian UIQ phone in 2006 (the M600i IIRC, Jobs was rumored use an earlier phone in the same OS series, the P800), where they had put the action buttons at the bottom of the screen at a finger-friendly size. I remember often quickly using my fingers to do common tasks, but it was a resistive screen and they still used scroll bars and tiny checkboxes. In hindsight it shouldn't have been that difficult to make the leap to finger-first, but it was Apple who did it.
- icebraining 9y ago
  it was Apple who did it I think you mean LG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada Apple made the first successful one. Which seems to be their knack, after all.
  - alain94040 9y ago
    Have you seen the UI of the Prada? Check out the browser for instance, its keyboard or the scroll bars: https://youtu.be/rQnVOrQMjOc?t=274 https://youtu.be/rQnVOrQMjOc?t=274
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Exactly, the iPhone was second but has a much better UI. Much like the iPod.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Pretty sure Prada didn't have a proximity sensor or multitouch.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Of course it didn't have multitouch; Apple had bought the patent beforehand.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        And that is perhaps the one thing everyone glosses over. Multitouch was being developed by a startup that Apple gobbled up.
- girvo 9y ago
  The M600i was my all time favourite phone, only to be surpassed by the Nokia N9. That rocker QWERTY keyboard was god-damned fantastic.
macintux 9y ago
> I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable I hear that a lot, and I'm not convinced. I think people needed to have a strong motivation to get used to software keyboards. I think most companies implementing one would have screwed it up (see: RIM). So you'd need a compelling use case and compelling software to force that sea change. I find it plausible that, absent Apple's existence, we'd be using clunky GUIs on desktop computers and even clunkier GUIs with physical keyboards on smartphones.
- macintux 9y ago
  I also think it required a manufacturer to completely sell out to the concept. If there are 5 similar phones by the same company, only one of which has a software-only keyboard, you won't get sales, development, and engineering support you need to drive a successful change. Much like laptops still being shipped with floppy drives and VGA ports years after those technologies were effectively dead.
  - CommieBobDole 9y ago
    Laptops ship with VGA ports because the business world is full of conference rooms where the projector only has a VGA cable.
    - macintux 9y ago
      And if PC manufacturers forced the issue they'd sell more dongles and/or drag businesses into the 21st century.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm not convinced either. Android was still getting built with a Blackberry-style physical keyboard at that point. It feels like if it wasn't for a few researchers in the interaction lab we wouldn't have gotten software keyboards for a while.
- Animats 9y ago
  I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable. We could have had a long detour through Blackberry-like devices with keyboards. But comprehensive smartphones in some form were to be expected as the electronics got cheap enough. I find it plausible that, absent Apple's existence, we'd be using clunky GUIs on desktop computers Without Apple, we probably would have had something like lower-priced Sun or Apollo workstations on the desktop. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, people at well-funded companies did have Sun workstations on the desktop. With, though, crappy GUIs. XWindows is from that era. It would never have occurred to Sun to hire Susan Kare. Sun didn't have the volume to support software companies. Interleaf had something better than Microsoft Word by 1983, before the Mac had even shipped. But their business model was to bundle a few Sun workstations and a laser printer with the software, for about $60K. Software for Sun machines tended to cost a few thousand dollars per seat.
ghaff 9y ago
It's also at least arguable that Apple earned (past successes, devoted following, etc.) something of a license to break with existing patterns. Even if the new patterns/techs weren't quite baked yet and people weren't fully ready for them. This applied to dropping the hardware keyboard on the iPhone. It also applied to something like the lack of printing on the original iPad. This was a big critique that a lot of people had when the iPad first came out. Now, even though there are printing options, most people don't really care any longer.
- neom 9y ago
  Johnny actually talks a little about that (skeuomorphism) in this article from 2013. : https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/19/apple-jony-ive-craig-federighi/2834575/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/19/apple-jony-iv...
ColanR 9y ago
> If you figure that little keyboards were a dead end, then about the only remaining option was to use a touch screen. Actually, the Palm Pilot from the 2000's was an alternative to both - sort of a touch screen, but used a stylus and its own script for writing characters.
- gregpilling 9y ago
  I still have a Handspring in my desk!
Eridrus 9y ago
This makes no sense at all. All the cell phone companies had their own proprietary OS. Android was getting built at literally the same time.
- rospaya 9y ago
  > All the cell phone companies had their own proprietary OS. Symbian was used by dozens of manufacturers and came in different flavors. S60 for standard smartphones, S80/90 for communicators, UIQ for touchscreens. Windows Mobile was also widely used and had an edition for phones using a touchscreen and one without them. Hundreds of millions were sold before the iPhone even came out.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    And the S90 UI would continue on into Maemo. And i swear i could finger type on the 770 before iPhone showed up, even though it was a resistive screen.
- pfranz 9y ago
  Android looked more like a Blackberry competitor prior to the iPhone. https://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/10/27/android-before-and-after-the-iphone/ https://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/10/27/android-before-and-...
pchristensen 9y ago
> I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable Yeah, in 2000 I assumed that phones would end up like that, because keys took too much space for something that fits in your pocket. I was an enthusiastic fan of Windows Mobile when it came out, and I've been on iOS since the first iPod Touch.

rjsw 9y ago

Handspring could have left the keyboard off the Treo, their earlier PDAs were much closer in style to the iPhone.

kalleboo 9y ago

Other phone vendors also felt tantalizingly close, but they were all busy optimizing their local maxima without making that final "finger-controlled" breakthrough. I remember using a Sony Ericsson Symbian UIQ phone in 2006 (the M600i IIRC, Jobs was rumored use an earlier phone in the same OS series, the P800), where they had put the action buttons at the bottom of the screen at a finger-friendly size. I remember often quickly using my fingers to do common tasks, but it was a resistive screen and they still used scroll bars and tiny checkboxes. In hindsight it shouldn't have been that difficult to make the leap to finger-first, but it was Apple who did it.

icebraining 9y ago
it was Apple who did it I think you mean LG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada Apple made the first successful one. Which seems to be their knack, after all.
- alain94040 9y ago
  Have you seen the UI of the Prada? Check out the browser for instance, its keyboard or the scroll bars: https://youtu.be/rQnVOrQMjOc?t=274 https://youtu.be/rQnVOrQMjOc?t=274
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Exactly, the iPhone was second but has a much better UI. Much like the iPod.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Pretty sure Prada didn't have a proximity sensor or multitouch.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Of course it didn't have multitouch; Apple had bought the patent beforehand.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      And that is perhaps the one thing everyone glosses over. Multitouch was being developed by a startup that Apple gobbled up.
girvo 9y ago
The M600i was my all time favourite phone, only to be surpassed by the Nokia N9. That rocker QWERTY keyboard was god-damned fantastic.

macintux 9y ago

> I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable I hear that a lot, and I'm not convinced. I think people needed to have a strong motivation to get used to software keyboards. I think most companies implementing one would have screwed it up (see: RIM). So you'd need a compelling use case and compelling software to force that sea change. I find it plausible that, absent Apple's existence, we'd be using clunky GUIs on desktop computers and even clunkier GUIs with physical keyboards on smartphones.

macintux 9y ago
I also think it required a manufacturer to completely sell out to the concept. If there are 5 similar phones by the same company, only one of which has a software-only keyboard, you won't get sales, development, and engineering support you need to drive a successful change. Much like laptops still being shipped with floppy drives and VGA ports years after those technologies were effectively dead.
- CommieBobDole 9y ago
  Laptops ship with VGA ports because the business world is full of conference rooms where the projector only has a VGA cable.
  - macintux 9y ago
    And if PC manufacturers forced the issue they'd sell more dongles and/or drag businesses into the 21st century.
Eridrus 9y ago
Yeah, I'm not convinced either. Android was still getting built with a Blackberry-style physical keyboard at that point. It feels like if it wasn't for a few researchers in the interaction lab we wouldn't have gotten software keyboards for a while.
Animats 9y ago
I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable. We could have had a long detour through Blackberry-like devices with keyboards. But comprehensive smartphones in some form were to be expected as the electronics got cheap enough. I find it plausible that, absent Apple's existence, we'd be using clunky GUIs on desktop computers Without Apple, we probably would have had something like lower-priced Sun or Apollo workstations on the desktop. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, people at well-funded companies did have Sun workstations on the desktop. With, though, crappy GUIs. XWindows is from that era. It would never have occurred to Sun to hire Susan Kare. Sun didn't have the volume to support software companies. Interleaf had something better than Microsoft Word by 1983, before the Mac had even shipped. But their business model was to bundle a few Sun workstations and a laser printer with the software, for about $60K. Software for Sun machines tended to cost a few thousand dollars per seat.

ghaff 9y ago

It's also at least arguable that Apple earned (past successes, devoted following, etc.) something of a license to break with existing patterns. Even if the new patterns/techs weren't quite baked yet and people weren't fully ready for them. This applied to dropping the hardware keyboard on the iPhone. It also applied to something like the lack of printing on the original iPad. This was a big critique that a lot of people had when the iPad first came out. Now, even though there are printing options, most people don't really care any longer.

neom 9y ago
Johnny actually talks a little about that (skeuomorphism) in this article from 2013. : https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/19/apple-jony-ive-craig-federighi/2834575/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/19/apple-jony-iv...

ColanR 9y ago

> If you figure that little keyboards were a dead end, then about the only remaining option was to use a touch screen. Actually, the Palm Pilot from the 2000's was an alternative to both - sort of a touch screen, but used a stylus and its own script for writing characters.

gregpilling 9y ago
I still have a Handspring in my desk!

Eridrus 9y ago

This makes no sense at all. All the cell phone companies had their own proprietary OS. Android was getting built at literally the same time.

rospaya 9y ago
> All the cell phone companies had their own proprietary OS. Symbian was used by dozens of manufacturers and came in different flavors. S60 for standard smartphones, S80/90 for communicators, UIQ for touchscreens. Windows Mobile was also widely used and had an edition for phones using a touchscreen and one without them. Hundreds of millions were sold before the iPhone even came out.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  And the S90 UI would continue on into Maemo. And i swear i could finger type on the 770 before iPhone showed up, even though it was a resistive screen.
pfranz 9y ago
Android looked more like a Blackberry competitor prior to the iPhone. https://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/10/27/android-before-and-after-the-iphone/ https://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/10/27/android-before-and-...

pchristensen 9y ago

> I think that the basic interface for the iPhone was fairly inevitable Yeah, in 2000 I assumed that phones would end up like that, because keys took too much space for something that fits in your pocket. I was an enthusiastic fan of Windows Mobile when it came out, and I've been on iOS since the first iPod Touch.