10 ms·

We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. Imagine if they had just partnered with existing phone manufacturers rather than trying to build a magic touc

We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. Imagine if they had just partnered with existing phone manufacturers rather than trying to build a magic touch slate. Wait, we do know what would have happened - the Motorola ROKR, which everyone should be forgiven for forgetting.

function_seven 9y ago
I don’t forgive you for reminding me of that hobbled abomination. Though I guess it serves as an example of unchecked carrier power. Something to point to for today’s net neutrality arguments?
- r00fus 9y ago
  Moto ROKR was a stalking horse to give Apple intel on how the carriers worked. 100 songs? It was designed to fail.
  - collyw 9y ago
    It was Apple that insisted on the limit.
greggman 9y ago
there is a 20+ year history of PDAs before the iPhone. For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone. It's home screen has a grid of 3x4 icons of apps and general works very analogous to the iPhone. Apple did an amazing job of polishing the PDA but they made an incremental jump being at the right place at the right time with affordable cellular data and capacitive touch and an amazingly well designed ui it sounds like they we're doing much more with their car efforts
- threeseed 9y ago
  > For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. Because that is what you are saying. I owned that PDA as well as the Treo 650 which was far better and the iPhone isn't an incremental jump. It was a complete revolution.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. Compared to a car with freakin' spherical wheels, yes, it does.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - LyTeo 9y ago
    > I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. He argued against an assumption that apple reinvented smartphone. If you want to use this argument, you have to show that people think that Ferrari reinvented the car.
    - nrhk 9y ago
      Only if Ferrari came into the market with a bunch of innovations that every manufacturer then adopts. I would call that a reinvention and more or less what Apple did. People were using styluses, the phones were blocky and thick, the UI was confusing and adopted from desktop instead designed for mobile, hardware keyboards, small screens, business focused I had every "smartphone" and internet tablet back in day running on Palm, Symbian, Blackberry. All of those OS's are completely irrelevant today because of how far Apple pushed the envelope. Though I thought Palm was headed in the right direction with the Pre. You can call it an evolution but it was such a major leap it was essentially a redefinition.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    The Hyundai Coupe from about ~15 years ago looked rather like a Ferrari 456. In fact some adverts here in the UK actually showed them side-by-side.
- rimliu 9y ago
  > capacitive touch Without this I do not thing anything qualifies as "acts like first gen iPhone".
josteink 9y ago
> We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market. They took something which existed and was awkward to use, and re-did the UI layer of the whole thing. They refined something else which was already proven. They didn't invent something original from scratch. Here Apple is clearly trying to design a new kind of a car, where every part is different from what's already out there in the industry. Where none of the new bits has been invented yet. They are trying to do original discovery in addition to refining things, in an industry where they have absolutely zero experience. > Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently .... Apple, as always focused on clean designs, wanted to do away with the awkward cone. That they were even considered things like this important in a self-driving car when they hadn't even solved the self-driving bit (or even car-bit) yet tells me all I need to know about the realism of this project. There was none. It was doomed from day one.
- grwthckrmstr 9y ago
  Apple is reinventing the car?
- omegaworks 9y ago
  They have no clear visionary at the top vetting things for quality user experiences. Had Jobs still been with us we might actually have beautiful 3D Touch experiences. We might be seeing a beautiful refinement of the driving experience. Instead they're flailing. Hopefully this is a realignment and rededicated effort to do what they do best: make cool, proven tech perfect and accessible.
  - IBM 9y ago
    "When Steve is gone," Tevanian said, "the competition still will not have Steve Jobs."
- danso 9y ago
  Also, the iPhone was preceded by years of producing iPods, which at least gave them expertise in portable electronics. What has Apple produced that is remotely similar to an automobile? It's not just design expertise, but the supply chain and manufacturing. Auto parts industry is massive. Is controlling the parts for a computer on the same scale as for an entire automobile? I suppose if Tesla can do it...but Tessa's cars so far don't seem as ambitious as what Project Titan was looking at.
gambiting 9y ago
Wait, what was wrong with the ROKR? I had the E1 and it was a fantastic phone for its time.
Shivetya 9y ago
reinventing the wheel and more changes to how current equipment works, in particular viewing aids, would bury this car in regulatory hell. it would take years to get permission for it to be on the road. figure it this way, if it takes many years just to get permission to change headlight technology can you imagine the time it would take to adjust to what Apple was proposing? phones are dead simple compared to cars because phones NHTSA and Insurance issues to face up to
- dimillian 9y ago
  Good question: Is the iPhone a side effect of the iPod touch or the iPod touch a side effect of the iPhone?
danmaz74 9y ago
All technologies used in the iPhone were proven - what Apple did right is to combine them in a much better way than the previous iterations. With self driving cars, it's not about usability/utility, it's still about having the basic tech work.
- dkonofalski 9y ago
  That's like saying that the first mobile phone used technologies that were all proven and that the inventors just combined them in a much better way because radios and phones existed. The combination itself is exactly what made it an invention and a revolution. Nearly every technology right now that's a revolution (Uber, for example) is a revolution precisely because it did something that's never been done before by standing on the shoulders of what came before it. The difference is that the combination and or features gained from that combination allowed the invention to leap frog over what existed before it.

function_seven 9y ago

I don’t forgive you for reminding me of that hobbled abomination. Though I guess it serves as an example of unchecked carrier power. Something to point to for today’s net neutrality arguments?

r00fus 9y ago
Moto ROKR was a stalking horse to give Apple intel on how the carriers worked. 100 songs? It was designed to fail.
- collyw 9y ago
  It was Apple that insisted on the limit.

greggman 9y ago

there is a 20+ year history of PDAs before the iPhone. For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone. It's home screen has a grid of 3x4 icons of apps and general works very analogous to the iPhone. Apple did an amazing job of polishing the PDA but they made an incremental jump being at the right place at the right time with affordable cellular data and capacitive touch and an amazingly well designed ui it sounds like they we're doing much more with their car efforts

threeseed 9y ago
> For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. Because that is what you are saying. I owned that PDA as well as the Treo 650 which was far better and the iPhone isn't an incremental jump. It was a complete revolution.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. Compared to a car with freakin' spherical wheels, yes, it does.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- LyTeo 9y ago
  > I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari. He argued against an assumption that apple reinvented smartphone. If you want to use this argument, you have to show that people think that Ferrari reinvented the car.
  - nrhk 9y ago
    Only if Ferrari came into the market with a bunch of innovations that every manufacturer then adopts. I would call that a reinvention and more or less what Apple did. People were using styluses, the phones were blocky and thick, the UI was confusing and adopted from desktop instead designed for mobile, hardware keyboards, small screens, business focused I had every "smartphone" and internet tablet back in day running on Palm, Symbian, Blackberry. All of those OS's are completely irrelevant today because of how far Apple pushed the envelope. Though I thought Palm was headed in the right direction with the Pre. You can call it an evolution but it was such a major leap it was essentially a redefinition.
- arethuza 9y ago
  The Hyundai Coupe from about ~15 years ago looked rather like a Ferrari 456. In fact some adverts here in the UK actually showed them side-by-side.
rimliu 9y ago
> capacitive touch Without this I do not thing anything qualifies as "acts like first gen iPhone".

josteink 9y ago

> We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market. They took something which existed and was awkward to use, and re-did the UI layer of the whole thing. They refined something else which was already proven. They didn't invent something original from scratch. Here Apple is clearly trying to design a new kind of a car, where every part is different from what's already out there in the industry. Where none of the new bits has been invented yet. They are trying to do original discovery in addition to refining things, in an industry where they have absolutely zero experience. > Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently .... Apple, as always focused on clean designs, wanted to do away with the awkward cone. That they were even considered things like this important in a self-driving car when they hadn't even solved the self-driving bit (or even car-bit) yet tells me all I need to know about the realism of this project. There was none. It was doomed from day one.

grwthckrmstr 9y ago
Apple is reinventing the car?
omegaworks 9y ago
They have no clear visionary at the top vetting things for quality user experiences. Had Jobs still been with us we might actually have beautiful 3D Touch experiences. We might be seeing a beautiful refinement of the driving experience. Instead they're flailing. Hopefully this is a realignment and rededicated effort to do what they do best: make cool, proven tech perfect and accessible.
- IBM 9y ago
  "When Steve is gone," Tevanian said, "the competition still will not have Steve Jobs."
danso 9y ago
Also, the iPhone was preceded by years of producing iPods, which at least gave them expertise in portable electronics. What has Apple produced that is remotely similar to an automobile? It's not just design expertise, but the supply chain and manufacturing. Auto parts industry is massive. Is controlling the parts for a computer on the same scale as for an entire automobile? I suppose if Tesla can do it...but Tessa's cars so far don't seem as ambitious as what Project Titan was looking at.

gambiting 9y ago

Wait, what was wrong with the ROKR? I had the E1 and it was a fantastic phone for its time.

Shivetya 9y ago

reinventing the wheel and more changes to how current equipment works, in particular viewing aids, would bury this car in regulatory hell. it would take years to get permission for it to be on the road. figure it this way, if it takes many years just to get permission to change headlight technology can you imagine the time it would take to adjust to what Apple was proposing? phones are dead simple compared to cars because phones NHTSA and Insurance issues to face up to

dimillian 9y ago
Good question: Is the iPhone a side effect of the iPod touch or the iPod touch a side effect of the iPhone?

danmaz74 9y ago

All technologies used in the iPhone were proven - what Apple did right is to combine them in a much better way than the previous iterations. With self driving cars, it's not about usability/utility, it's still about having the basic tech work.

dkonofalski 9y ago
That's like saying that the first mobile phone used technologies that were all proven and that the inventors just combined them in a much better way because radios and phones existed. The combination itself is exactly what made it an invention and a revolution. Nearly every technology right now that's a revolution (Uber, for example) is a revolution precisely because it did something that's never been done before by standing on the shoulders of what came before it. The difference is that the combination and or features gained from that combination allowed the invention to leap frog over what existed before it.