4 ms·

It sounds really ironic to compare Brownie (which was a success through its cheap price) with iPhone which is essentially the most expensive camera device in it

It sounds really ironic to compare Brownie (which was a success through its cheap price) with iPhone which is essentially the most expensive camera device in its class (which for the most of the world remains exclusive for the upper middle class). It's also silly to ascribe this trend to iPhone alone. Camera phones were in heavy use before iPhone showed up.

ljf 6y ago
I am no iPhone/apple fan boy (in fact the opposite) but it is easy to forget that despite camera phones existing before the original iphone, the photos languished on the vast majority of phones, never seen by others. To get them off you had to plug your phone into your pc, pull the media card, or pay through the nose to email them to yourself (unless you had WiFi at home which not everyone did at the time). MMS was the only common form of media sharing for loads of users and that really degraded the image quality - I forget the maximum MMS size but it was tiny. The iPhone and the apps actually encouraged people to share their images and explore others in the way that devices before didn't. And even if you didn't use the apps the ease of backup through iTunes was a massive boost to people accessing and using their images away from their phones. I had Dropbox on my android phones as soon as you could and would tell everyone to do the same, but for android it wasn't really until Google photos that photo backup and sharing got as simple and easy. And even recently it still wasn't installed on the majority of new phones, and manufacturers pushed their own backup/gallery apps that were rarely as good.
- dingaling 6y ago
  Facebook did more to popularise mobile phone snapshot sharing than any app and it was a piece of cake to upload from the phone gallery via the built-in browser. Even basic feature phones could do so.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > To get them off you had to plug your phone into your pc, pull the media card, or pay through the nose to email them to yourself (unless you had WiFi at home which not everyone did at the time). How is that different from iPhone? > The iPhone and the apps actually encouraged people to share their images and explore others in the way that devices before didn't. Shouldn't you give credit for that to the apps/services? Pioneering service in this regard was e.g. Flickr which weren't exclusive to Apple - you could use them on the web, on iPhone, Android, even dumbphones. > but for android it wasn't really until Google photos that photo backup and sharing got as simple and easy. Sharing photos on Facebook was a thing since the beginning of Android. That used to be a big reason to sign up on FB.
canofbars 6y ago
>which for the most of the world remains exclusive for the upper middle class Maybe true in poor countries but in Australia it seems that essentially everyone has one or a phone at a similar cost. You see food delivery drivers and school children walking around with iphone 12 pros. Monthly payment plans make anything purchasable I guess.

ljf 6y ago

I am no iPhone/apple fan boy (in fact the opposite) but it is easy to forget that despite camera phones existing before the original iphone, the photos languished on the vast majority of phones, never seen by others. To get them off you had to plug your phone into your pc, pull the media card, or pay through the nose to email them to yourself (unless you had WiFi at home which not everyone did at the time). MMS was the only common form of media sharing for loads of users and that really degraded the image quality - I forget the maximum MMS size but it was tiny. The iPhone and the apps actually encouraged people to share their images and explore others in the way that devices before didn't. And even if you didn't use the apps the ease of backup through iTunes was a massive boost to people accessing and using their images away from their phones. I had Dropbox on my android phones as soon as you could and would tell everyone to do the same, but for android it wasn't really until Google photos that photo backup and sharing got as simple and easy. And even recently it still wasn't installed on the majority of new phones, and manufacturers pushed their own backup/gallery apps that were rarely as good.

dingaling 6y ago
Facebook did more to popularise mobile phone snapshot sharing than any app and it was a piece of cake to upload from the phone gallery via the built-in browser. Even basic feature phones could do so.
The_Colonel 6y ago
> To get them off you had to plug your phone into your pc, pull the media card, or pay through the nose to email them to yourself (unless you had WiFi at home which not everyone did at the time). How is that different from iPhone? > The iPhone and the apps actually encouraged people to share their images and explore others in the way that devices before didn't. Shouldn't you give credit for that to the apps/services? Pioneering service in this regard was e.g. Flickr which weren't exclusive to Apple - you could use them on the web, on iPhone, Android, even dumbphones. > but for android it wasn't really until Google photos that photo backup and sharing got as simple and easy. Sharing photos on Facebook was a thing since the beginning of Android. That used to be a big reason to sign up on FB.

canofbars 6y ago

>which for the most of the world remains exclusive for the upper middle class Maybe true in poor countries but in Australia it seems that essentially everyone has one or a phone at a similar cost. You see food delivery drivers and school children walking around with iphone 12 pros. Monthly payment plans make anything purchasable I guess.