It’s interesting to ponder how much of the smartphone ecosystem was an accidental byproduct of implementation details: namely, the decision to use a stripped-do

It’s interesting to ponder how much of the smartphone ecosystem was an accidental byproduct of implementation details: namely, the decision to use a stripped-down desktop OS, rather than a beefed-up iPod OS. Allegedly, the latter was also in the works as a phone, but it was Scott Forstall’s OS X team who won the battle internally. Even though the feature set was shipped as “iPod that makes calls”, the fact that everyone knew there was a full OS under the hood made the proliferation of apps inevitable. I suspect we would have gotten to the present-day norm eventually either way; but, if not for “OS X in your pocket”, the iPhone might have wound up in the same historic dustbin as the Newton, the Palm, and the Sidekick, a mere precursor rather than the thin end of a revolutionary wedge.