5 ms·

As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were numbe

by kumarm 8y ago

As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were number of Phone that existed with several of those styles. How many people know Verizon Had a decent app store (Apps developed with Brew) in US before iPhone? This included similar testing that you see for AppStore TODAY.

lyzan 8y ago
I've probably used more brew apps than play/appStore/etc combined since. Was a wonderfully useful store with generally high quality, useful, apps that we easy to find.
threeseed 8y ago
I commercially developed both Windows Mobile and Palm apps. None had exactly the same design nor look & feel as the iPhone. Which phone are you referring to ?
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I think maybe he is talking about the general IDEA, not necessarily the look and feel. You're right in asserting that there really was nothing like iPhone before iPhone, but the IDEA was there from way back with HP Jornadas and the older BREW phones. (I do concede that the UI of all of those devices was, in PRACTICE, much different than the iPhone UI. That much is undeniable when you look at old pictures of them. Back then, basically they all tried to copy MS Windows in a small screen.)
  - c22 8y ago
    You could look further back, all the way to 1992. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Even Nokia had touch phones before iPhone was a thing. https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php
  - Aaargh20318 8y ago
    But the general idea of the UI was what set the iPhone apart. Instead of using a stylus to simulate a mouse, it used your fingers and direct manipulation of the user interface. That was a huge conceptual change.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      I used my fingers on my Palm Pilot because it was more practical than dragging the stylus out. It wasn't using fingers per se that was revolutionary with the iPhone but that it packaged everything up in a package that was actually attractive to "normal people" instead of only appealing to gadget geeks and power users the way things like Palm devices did.
      - Aaargh20318 8y ago
        > I used my fingers on my Palm Pilot because it was more practical than dragging the stylus out. Still using it in the same way as a mouse. The thing that set the iOS UI apart is direct manipulation of the UI. E.g. instead of using a scrollbar/arrows to scroll, you use your finger to move the page around. Instead of clicking a checkbox you move a slider. Instead of clicking a "zoom in" button you 'stretch' the photo out using your fingers. etc.
        vidarh 8y ago
        That might be true for some interactions, but you touched icons, buttons etc., and frankly I don't think that part would have made that much of a difference for users. It certainly wasn't something most potential users knew about the Palm Pilot before rejecting it out of hand as some gadget.
        Aaargh20318 8y ago
        > I don't think that part would have made that much of a difference for users I do. I think it was a revolutionary improvement. It's so much more intuitive to use, it's the one thing that makes your grandma able to use an iPad. It's hard to overstate how important this was. The fact that now you know about it, it seems obvious and not a big deal emphasises how big of an improvement it was. > It certainly wasn't something most potential users knew about the Palm Pilot before rejecting it out of hand as some gadget. Of course not, it wasn't invented yet so they didn't know the Palm Pilot lacked this.
scarface74 8y ago
I developed for Windows Mobile before and slightly after the iPhone. Windows Mobile was slightly ahead of the iPhone as an app platform until around 2009.
- mcny 8y ago
  Can you please elaborate on what made windows mobile better for apps? Why did Microsoft not want to continue this? I think windows mobile was a complete scratch and rewrite? My understanding for why Google wanted Android and open handset alliance is the fragmentation of mobile at that time: it took too much effort to get Google maps on all these different J2ME (I think I got the name right) devices.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    I had both J2ME and Symbian versions of Google Maps running on my Symbian devices. Anyone that tried to make an Android app run properly across Android devices, specially Samsung ones, knows that the fragmentation issues aren't gone.
spyder 8y ago
Yea, if I remember correctly the closest to the iPhone's look was the LG Prada one year before the iPhone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  Used that (was a J2ME developer at the time), it was nothing like an iPhone.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    But it definitely had rounded corners. So any reasonable person should be able to conclude that Apple did not invent rounded corners?

by kumarm 8y ago

lyzan 8y ago

I've probably used more brew apps than play/appStore/etc combined since. Was a wonderfully useful store with generally high quality, useful, apps that we easy to find.

threeseed 8y ago

I commercially developed both Windows Mobile and Palm apps. None had exactly the same design nor look & feel as the iPhone. Which phone are you referring to ?

bilbo0s 8y ago
I think maybe he is talking about the general IDEA, not necessarily the look and feel. You're right in asserting that there really was nothing like iPhone before iPhone, but the IDEA was there from way back with HP Jornadas and the older BREW phones. (I do concede that the UI of all of those devices was, in PRACTICE, much different than the iPhone UI. That much is undeniable when you look at old pictures of them. Back then, basically they all tried to copy MS Windows in a small screen.)
- c22 8y ago
  You could look further back, all the way to 1992. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Even Nokia had touch phones before iPhone was a thing. https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  But the general idea of the UI was what set the iPhone apart. Instead of using a stylus to simulate a mouse, it used your fingers and direct manipulation of the user interface. That was a huge conceptual change.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    I used my fingers on my Palm Pilot because it was more practical than dragging the stylus out. It wasn't using fingers per se that was revolutionary with the iPhone but that it packaged everything up in a package that was actually attractive to "normal people" instead of only appealing to gadget geeks and power users the way things like Palm devices did.
    - Aaargh20318 8y ago
      > I used my fingers on my Palm Pilot because it was more practical than dragging the stylus out. Still using it in the same way as a mouse. The thing that set the iOS UI apart is direct manipulation of the UI. E.g. instead of using a scrollbar/arrows to scroll, you use your finger to move the page around. Instead of clicking a checkbox you move a slider. Instead of clicking a "zoom in" button you 'stretch' the photo out using your fingers. etc.
      - vidarh 8y ago
        That might be true for some interactions, but you touched icons, buttons etc., and frankly I don't think that part would have made that much of a difference for users. It certainly wasn't something most potential users knew about the Palm Pilot before rejecting it out of hand as some gadget.
        Aaargh20318 8y ago
        > I don't think that part would have made that much of a difference for users I do. I think it was a revolutionary improvement. It's so much more intuitive to use, it's the one thing that makes your grandma able to use an iPad. It's hard to overstate how important this was. The fact that now you know about it, it seems obvious and not a big deal emphasises how big of an improvement it was. > It certainly wasn't something most potential users knew about the Palm Pilot before rejecting it out of hand as some gadget. Of course not, it wasn't invented yet so they didn't know the Palm Pilot lacked this.

scarface74 8y ago

I developed for Windows Mobile before and slightly after the iPhone. Windows Mobile was slightly ahead of the iPhone as an app platform until around 2009.

mcny 8y ago
Can you please elaborate on what made windows mobile better for apps? Why did Microsoft not want to continue this? I think windows mobile was a complete scratch and rewrite? My understanding for why Google wanted Android and open handset alliance is the fragmentation of mobile at that time: it took too much effort to get Google maps on all these different J2ME (I think I got the name right) devices.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  I had both J2ME and Symbian versions of Google Maps running on my Symbian devices. Anyone that tried to make an Android app run properly across Android devices, specially Samsung ones, knows that the fragmentation issues aren't gone.

spyder 8y ago

Yea, if I remember correctly the closest to the iPhone's look was the LG Prada one year before the iPhone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

Aaargh20318 8y ago
Used that (was a J2ME developer at the time), it was nothing like an iPhone.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  But it definitely had rounded corners. So any reasonable person should be able to conclude that Apple did not invent rounded corners?