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It really wasn't as massive a leap as you make it out to be. It's likely that we would have ended up with something very similar to today's smartphones even if

It really wasn't as massive a leap as you make it out to be. It's likely that we would have ended up with something very similar to today's smartphones even if the iPhone had never existed. It wasn't the first smartphone. It wasn't the first phone to use a capacitive touch screen. The first iPhone didn't even have the app store - it launched with the 3G a year after the the first iPhone was released, if I remember correctly. At that time, Android and Blackberry both had app stores in the works. They might have released before the iOS App Store - I don't remember. Anyways, Apple did create a great product that deserves all of the popularity it has but they absolutely did not push us 10 years into the future of computing.

MBCook 8y ago
How long do you think it would have taken? Seriously? It took Google a few years to catch up having their massive resources and Apple as a guidepost. RIM had no incentive, they were trying to lock you into the BB server product and tried to get consumers on it to. The phone was a means to an end. MS wanted to push Windows. They’d been trying since CE first appeared and it still didn’t take off. As long as Balmer was there why would they do something different? They KEPT DOING IT even with Apple to follow. Palm was the closest. I guess they might have been my bet. But they were having trouble and had tr legacy of thinking about things the way PalmOS had done things. That might have slowed them down. Google was just copying RIM. They’d have gone somewhere, but I don’t know it would look anything like today’s smartphones. That may not be a bad thing. Apple did not move us up just 2 or 3 years. I don’t know how to come up with an exact number, and obviously it’s not something crazy like 20 or 50. But I could see a decade. How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? How long would it have taken if they didn’t have the Mac to look at? Paradigm shifts in UIs are hard to predict. Even if you make a good one it can be really hard to break in when something else is successful (even if only adequate). Apple defined the modern smartphone, and it wasn’t an IBM PC like thing of taking existing parts and just putting them together. It took a ton more work outside the existing molds.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  It would take exactly a year for Google to clean up Android enough. They had to scram because iPhone just outran them. About the only major thing iPhone brought was direct carrier deals from AT&T and Verizon for big data plans. Also lost the keyboard. (Not the first device to do so either.)
  - askafriend 8y ago
    The actual history of Android disagrees with your hypothesis. "Chris DeSalvo, who worked alongside Andy Rubin at Danger before joining Google to build its mobile OS, says that the iPhone's announcement forced everyone on his team to realize that they 'are going to have to start over.' Already in intensive development for two years by 2007, Android was Google's vision for a mobile operating system of the future. Still, in spite of all the work that had already gone into it, the Mountain View company was sure it couldn't carry on along the trajectory it'd been following — the earliest Android devices looked very much like Googlified BlackBerrys — and had to alter its plans to compete with the iPhone's new touch-centric interface. A book excerpt in The Atlantic cites Andy Rubin, who led the early development of Android, as saying "I guess we’re not going to ship that phone," in reference to the Sooner project Google was initially planning to reveal to the world." https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-over-the-day-the-iphone-was-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-...
  - fhood 8y ago
    The iPhone did no "outrun" them. They weren't even in the same race. When the iPhone came out Google did a massive overhaul of android in order to emulate the iPhone. Prior to that android was meant to look like blackberry.
- smitherfield 8y ago
  >How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? The Amiga was '85. It did take a while for PC-compatibles, of course.
  - 8y ago
imron 8y ago
> It's likely that we would have ended up with something very similar to today's smartphones even if the iPhone had never existed. I'm not so sure. A picture says a thousand words: https://www.cultofmac.com/145083/what-phones-looked-like-before-and-after-the-iphone-transformed-the-industry-image/ https://www.cultofmac.com/145083/what-phones-looked-like-bef...
- srslack 8y ago
  The LG Prada is certainly worth some words of acknowledgement, but acknowledging it wouldn't fit the narrative that page is attempting to cultivate. There are also examples going further back, such as the IBM Simon, and of course Apple's own Newton, which is technically not a smart phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  Agreed: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Apple_Newton_and_iPhone.jpg/800px-Apple_Newton_and_iPhone.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Ap...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
askafriend 8y ago
I was there. It was an absolutely massive leap. It captured people's imagination and proved that imagination could be reality in a way nothing else has since. It's quite easy to trivialize things in retrospect. But at that time, in that context, that device was pure magic. It changed so many people's relationship with general computing period. And like many people pointed out here, it's not about any individual piece, but it's more about how all the individual pieces fit together into one product, and one story that was so different from the prevailing story at the time. It was absolutely the execution that set them apart and moved our industry forward.
sweden 8y ago
I remember back then, in the early days of the smartphone era, the lack of good Android phones that could be comparable to an iPhone. Even the supposed high-end Android devices were severely lacking in terms of performance and smooth UI when compared to the latest iPhone. I think that the first Android phone that could actually compete with an iPhone must have been the Samsung Galaxy S3, in 2012, 6 years after the release of the original iPhone in 2007. Apple was way ahead of the competitors back then, they basically set the golden standard for what a smartphone should look like and it took many years for the competition to catch up.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
We wouldn't have, because Apple was the only company that was user-focused, not technology-focused. Windows, RIM, Nokia, and others had all tried to produce similar devices. They invariably ended up with a clunking mess of buttons and features that appealed to geeks and/or business people, and no one else. The genius wasn't in putting the parts together - although that was a significant achievement. It was in making a device that was uniquely beautiful, elegantly understated, and so easy to use it could (literally) be picked up by almost anyone. No other company has ever taken the obsessive interest in design and aesthetics that Apple had under Jobs. Not even the current Apple, which understands visual presentation, but seems to have prioritised ease-of-manufacture and profit margins over user delight. Jobs was hardly infallible, but when he had a hit he hit it out of the park. As for what we don't have - VR, smart home, and health, are all bumping along when they could be soaring. The other big miss was handing content creation over to YouTube. Apple could easily have set up a content store to match/beat YouTube, as a follow-up to podcasts and the app store. I have no idea if Jobs even considered any of the above. But Cook doesn't really get content, so Apple are unlikely to win big in these markets now - more likely to offer a not-quite-right product like Watch, which was mildly interesting, but not the game changer it might have been.
- TheLegace 8y ago
  https://youtu.be/auXc0tgdJSo?t=49m1s https://youtu.be/auXc0tgdJSo?t=49m1s
dreamcompiler 8y ago
It wasn't the first smartphone, but it was the first phone of any kind that wasn't bundled with crapware from the cellular companies and locked into their ecosystems. That was a huge win for consumers, and it was solely due to the persuasive power of Steve Jobs.
- MBCook 8y ago
  It doesn’t exactly fit the article or my original comment but what Apple did to carriers is just as big, possibly bigger, than the hardware/software of the iPhone. The carriers dictated the phones you could buy (in the US). They dictated the siftware on them. They dictated the interfaces. If they didn’t like a feature hey turned it off. I remember a camera phone that had Bluetooth support for sending files but Verizon turned it off because it competed with their expensive MMS service. I remember paying $5 for a terrible version of Bejeweled. I remember Sprint wanting to charge me $4 A MONTH to have Tetris on my RAZR. Android still suffers the crapware and delayed updates. Maybe Google’s latest attempt will finally fix that. But the iPhone RULED over the cell companies. They did what APPLE wanted because Apple held all the power. Verizon couldn’t tell you which games you could buy from the App Store. AT&T couldn’t make you use their email client. You never saw a Sprint branded browser or video startup screen. They were largely irrelevant. They were demoted to what they truely are: infrastructure. Does anyone want to go back to the world where carriers had 100% of the power over phones? What a difference that made. And I do wonder if anyone else could have ever done that. Apple had the right product at the right time (AT&T losing bad) to get enough leverage to do it.
  - dreamcompiler 8y ago
    Yep. Jobs originally went to Verizon, which balked when he said they would have no control over the phone. That's why the original iPhone carrier was AT&T and only AT&T.

MBCook 8y ago

How long do you think it would have taken? Seriously? It took Google a few years to catch up having their massive resources and Apple as a guidepost. RIM had no incentive, they were trying to lock you into the BB server product and tried to get consumers on it to. The phone was a means to an end. MS wanted to push Windows. They’d been trying since CE first appeared and it still didn’t take off. As long as Balmer was there why would they do something different? They KEPT DOING IT even with Apple to follow. Palm was the closest. I guess they might have been my bet. But they were having trouble and had tr legacy of thinking about things the way PalmOS had done things. That might have slowed them down. Google was just copying RIM. They’d have gone somewhere, but I don’t know it would look anything like today’s smartphones. That may not be a bad thing. Apple did not move us up just 2 or 3 years. I don’t know how to come up with an exact number, and obviously it’s not something crazy like 20 or 50. But I could see a decade. How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? How long would it have taken if they didn’t have the Mac to look at? Paradigm shifts in UIs are hard to predict. Even if you make a good one it can be really hard to break in when something else is successful (even if only adequate). Apple defined the modern smartphone, and it wasn’t an IBM PC like thing of taking existing parts and just putting them together. It took a ton more work outside the existing molds.

AstralStorm 8y ago
It would take exactly a year for Google to clean up Android enough. They had to scram because iPhone just outran them. About the only major thing iPhone brought was direct carrier deals from AT&T and Verizon for big data plans. Also lost the keyboard. (Not the first device to do so either.)
- askafriend 8y ago
  The actual history of Android disagrees with your hypothesis. "Chris DeSalvo, who worked alongside Andy Rubin at Danger before joining Google to build its mobile OS, says that the iPhone's announcement forced everyone on his team to realize that they 'are going to have to start over.' Already in intensive development for two years by 2007, Android was Google's vision for a mobile operating system of the future. Still, in spite of all the work that had already gone into it, the Mountain View company was sure it couldn't carry on along the trajectory it'd been following — the earliest Android devices looked very much like Googlified BlackBerrys — and had to alter its plans to compete with the iPhone's new touch-centric interface. A book excerpt in The Atlantic cites Andy Rubin, who led the early development of Android, as saying "I guess we’re not going to ship that phone," in reference to the Sooner project Google was initially planning to reveal to the world." https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-over-the-day-the-iphone-was-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-...
- fhood 8y ago
  The iPhone did no "outrun" them. They weren't even in the same race. When the iPhone came out Google did a massive overhaul of android in order to emulate the iPhone. Prior to that android was meant to look like blackberry.
smitherfield 8y ago
>How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? The Amiga was '85. It did take a while for PC-compatibles, of course.
- 8y ago

imron 8y ago

> It's likely that we would have ended up with something very similar to today's smartphones even if the iPhone had never existed. I'm not so sure. A picture says a thousand words: https://www.cultofmac.com/145083/what-phones-looked-like-before-and-after-the-iphone-transformed-the-industry-image/ https://www.cultofmac.com/145083/what-phones-looked-like-bef...

srslack 8y ago
The LG Prada is certainly worth some words of acknowledgement, but acknowledging it wouldn't fit the narrative that page is attempting to cultivate. There are also examples going further back, such as the IBM Simon, and of course Apple's own Newton, which is technically not a smart phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
neuromantik8086 8y ago
Agreed: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Apple_Newton_and_iPhone.jpg/800px-Apple_Newton_and_iPhone.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Ap...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

askafriend 8y ago

I was there. It was an absolutely massive leap. It captured people's imagination and proved that imagination could be reality in a way nothing else has since. It's quite easy to trivialize things in retrospect. But at that time, in that context, that device was pure magic. It changed so many people's relationship with general computing period. And like many people pointed out here, it's not about any individual piece, but it's more about how all the individual pieces fit together into one product, and one story that was so different from the prevailing story at the time. It was absolutely the execution that set them apart and moved our industry forward.

sweden 8y ago

I remember back then, in the early days of the smartphone era, the lack of good Android phones that could be comparable to an iPhone. Even the supposed high-end Android devices were severely lacking in terms of performance and smooth UI when compared to the latest iPhone. I think that the first Android phone that could actually compete with an iPhone must have been the Samsung Galaxy S3, in 2012, 6 years after the release of the original iPhone in 2007. Apple was way ahead of the competitors back then, they basically set the golden standard for what a smartphone should look like and it took many years for the competition to catch up.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

We wouldn't have, because Apple was the only company that was user-focused, not technology-focused. Windows, RIM, Nokia, and others had all tried to produce similar devices. They invariably ended up with a clunking mess of buttons and features that appealed to geeks and/or business people, and no one else. The genius wasn't in putting the parts together - although that was a significant achievement. It was in making a device that was uniquely beautiful, elegantly understated, and so easy to use it could (literally) be picked up by almost anyone. No other company has ever taken the obsessive interest in design and aesthetics that Apple had under Jobs. Not even the current Apple, which understands visual presentation, but seems to have prioritised ease-of-manufacture and profit margins over user delight. Jobs was hardly infallible, but when he had a hit he hit it out of the park. As for what we don't have - VR, smart home, and health, are all bumping along when they could be soaring. The other big miss was handing content creation over to YouTube. Apple could easily have set up a content store to match/beat YouTube, as a follow-up to podcasts and the app store. I have no idea if Jobs even considered any of the above. But Cook doesn't really get content, so Apple are unlikely to win big in these markets now - more likely to offer a not-quite-right product like Watch, which was mildly interesting, but not the game changer it might have been.

TheLegace 8y ago
https://youtu.be/auXc0tgdJSo?t=49m1s https://youtu.be/auXc0tgdJSo?t=49m1s

dreamcompiler 8y ago

It wasn't the first smartphone, but it was the first phone of any kind that wasn't bundled with crapware from the cellular companies and locked into their ecosystems. That was a huge win for consumers, and it was solely due to the persuasive power of Steve Jobs.

MBCook 8y ago
It doesn’t exactly fit the article or my original comment but what Apple did to carriers is just as big, possibly bigger, than the hardware/software of the iPhone. The carriers dictated the phones you could buy (in the US). They dictated the siftware on them. They dictated the interfaces. If they didn’t like a feature hey turned it off. I remember a camera phone that had Bluetooth support for sending files but Verizon turned it off because it competed with their expensive MMS service. I remember paying $5 for a terrible version of Bejeweled. I remember Sprint wanting to charge me $4 A MONTH to have Tetris on my RAZR. Android still suffers the crapware and delayed updates. Maybe Google’s latest attempt will finally fix that. But the iPhone RULED over the cell companies. They did what APPLE wanted because Apple held all the power. Verizon couldn’t tell you which games you could buy from the App Store. AT&T couldn’t make you use their email client. You never saw a Sprint branded browser or video startup screen. They were largely irrelevant. They were demoted to what they truely are: infrastructure. Does anyone want to go back to the world where carriers had 100% of the power over phones? What a difference that made. And I do wonder if anyone else could have ever done that. Apple had the right product at the right time (AT&T losing bad) to get enough leverage to do it.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  Yep. Jobs originally went to Verizon, which balked when he said they would have no control over the phone. That's why the original iPhone carrier was AT&T and only AT&T.