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Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. I think Apple's stroke of genius was

by pier25 5y ago

Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. I think Apple's stroke of genius was in the software and UI/UX.

macintux 5y ago
> Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. I agree (more or less) with the fact that someone would have come out with something similar. I strongly disagree that it would have changed the world. Apple had the "courage" to go all-in on the form factor with the retail footprint to sell it, and of course the built-in fan base and long history of innovation to make it interesting even in its fairly primitive form. Any other manufacturer would have either been too small to be so influential, or would have hedged their bets with a dozen alternatives, and their "iPhone" would have just been another dusty device in the corner of an AT&T store that no one knew how to use.
- pier25 5y ago
  > Any other manufacturer would have either been too small to be so influential Maybe small manufacturers, but if Nokia or Motorola had done it first (with good software) maybe we'd be a in different world.
  - macintux 5y ago
    You left out the rest of that... > or would have hedged their bets with a dozen alternatives Nokia or Motorola wouldn't have bet their phone business on a single UI/hardware combination like Apple did, and so I don't believe it would have had the technological impact the iPhone did.
    - pier25 5y ago
      That's a good point. Maybe you're right, who knows.
  - toast0 5y ago
    Nokia pissed off too many US carriers around this time. They were pushing a preinstalled VoIP client, and US carriers responded by dropping their phones. Even if they had something great, the US focus of tech media would have made it hard to see, and the US/EU frequency differences would have made it hard to use in the US unless Nokia made a US version, but lack of distribution makes that less likely.
Someone 5y ago
It may look like that in hindsight, and given advances in hardware, something with lots of sensors would have been built, but I’m not sure how similar it would have been. The removal of the keyboard, in particular, was far from universally perceived as a good idea at the time. I also think it would have been quite a while before anybody would have had the guts to not provide a slot for memory cards or to not have removable batteries.
- swetland 5y ago
  I dunno, touch-only had been done before (Newton, Palm), and I think it would have surfaced again. The UI/UX Apple built on top of the technology that was in everyone's (manufacturers) hands, I still think, was the biggest factor in pushing things forward industry-wide.
  - oautholaf 5y ago
    As important was Apple's brand power. Everyone already had an iPod in their pocket and loved it. That gave them legitimacy to set terms with carriers.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Both had a stylus. Possibly, we could have ended up with many humans embedding a tiny piece of hardware in their index fingers, so that they wouldn’t have to carry a stylus around ;-)
swetland 5y ago
Yup, Apple made software and UX important. And had the clout to ship their device with their software and ignore the carriers' obsession with random checkbox features. Which, in the end, helped us a ton with Android -- post iPhone announcement everyone wanted to compete with that, nobody knew how, and the carriers eased back a bit on their absurd requirements documents full of random features nobody cared about (WAP?). At the time iPhone was announced we were already running on the prototype of what became G1 (Dream), with multitouch. We just expected it would be the second form factor to ship, after a more "traditional" blackberry wedge sort of thing (Sooner). Post-iPhone it seemed silly to ship such a device first (you can imagine the reaction), so we skipped it and shifted focus to Dream.
- oblio 5y ago
  > WAP WAP made sense for its time: limited computing power, limited bandwidth, super low data caps.
  - swetland 5y ago
    Sure, but it made a lot less sense on a device with a much faster data network and full featured web browser... even so carriers had their lists of all the features required for phones to be certified on their networks and it was very feature-phone-centric at that time.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
No one else was working on a capacitive touchscreen device.
- oblio 5y ago
  Easy there, rewriting history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada > It was first announced on 12 December 2006. > It is the first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen. > The LG Prada was announced shortly <<before>> Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007. > After the release of the iPhone the head of the LG Mobile Handset R&D Center was quoted saying he believed Apple had stolen the idea from the KE850 after it was announced as part of the iF Design Award.
TheRealNGenius 5y ago
Everything is "pretty much inevitable" if you have the power of hindsight.

by pier25 5y ago

Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. I think Apple's stroke of genius was in the software and UI/UX.

macintux 5y ago

> Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. I agree (more or less) with the fact that someone would have come out with something similar. I strongly disagree that it would have changed the world. Apple had the "courage" to go all-in on the form factor with the retail footprint to sell it, and of course the built-in fan base and long history of innovation to make it interesting even in its fairly primitive form. Any other manufacturer would have either been too small to be so influential, or would have hedged their bets with a dozen alternatives, and their "iPhone" would have just been another dusty device in the corner of an AT&T store that no one knew how to use.

pier25 5y ago
> Any other manufacturer would have either been too small to be so influential Maybe small manufacturers, but if Nokia or Motorola had done it first (with good software) maybe we'd be a in different world.
- macintux 5y ago
  You left out the rest of that... > or would have hedged their bets with a dozen alternatives Nokia or Motorola wouldn't have bet their phone business on a single UI/hardware combination like Apple did, and so I don't believe it would have had the technological impact the iPhone did.
  - pier25 5y ago
    That's a good point. Maybe you're right, who knows.
- toast0 5y ago
  Nokia pissed off too many US carriers around this time. They were pushing a preinstalled VoIP client, and US carriers responded by dropping their phones. Even if they had something great, the US focus of tech media would have made it hard to see, and the US/EU frequency differences would have made it hard to use in the US unless Nokia made a US version, but lack of distribution makes that less likely.

Someone 5y ago

It may look like that in hindsight, and given advances in hardware, something with lots of sensors would have been built, but I’m not sure how similar it would have been. The removal of the keyboard, in particular, was far from universally perceived as a good idea at the time. I also think it would have been quite a while before anybody would have had the guts to not provide a slot for memory cards or to not have removable batteries.

swetland 5y ago
I dunno, touch-only had been done before (Newton, Palm), and I think it would have surfaced again. The UI/UX Apple built on top of the technology that was in everyone's (manufacturers) hands, I still think, was the biggest factor in pushing things forward industry-wide.
- oautholaf 5y ago
  As important was Apple's brand power. Everyone already had an iPod in their pocket and loved it. That gave them legitimacy to set terms with carriers.
- Someone 5y ago
  Both had a stylus. Possibly, we could have ended up with many humans embedding a tiny piece of hardware in their index fingers, so that they wouldn’t have to carry a stylus around ;-)

swetland 5y ago

Yup, Apple made software and UX important. And had the clout to ship their device with their software and ignore the carriers' obsession with random checkbox features. Which, in the end, helped us a ton with Android -- post iPhone announcement everyone wanted to compete with that, nobody knew how, and the carriers eased back a bit on their absurd requirements documents full of random features nobody cared about (WAP?). At the time iPhone was announced we were already running on the prototype of what became G1 (Dream), with multitouch. We just expected it would be the second form factor to ship, after a more "traditional" blackberry wedge sort of thing (Sooner). Post-iPhone it seemed silly to ship such a device first (you can imagine the reaction), so we skipped it and shifted focus to Dream.

oblio 5y ago
> WAP WAP made sense for its time: limited computing power, limited bandwidth, super low data caps.
- swetland 5y ago
  Sure, but it made a lot less sense on a device with a much faster data network and full featured web browser... even so carriers had their lists of all the features required for phones to be certified on their networks and it was very feature-phone-centric at that time.

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

No one else was working on a capacitive touchscreen device.

oblio 5y ago
Easy there, rewriting history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada > It was first announced on 12 December 2006. > It is the first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen. > The LG Prada was announced shortly <<before>> Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007. > After the release of the iPhone the head of the LG Mobile Handset R&D Center was quoted saying he believed Apple had stolen the idea from the KE850 after it was announced as part of the iF Design Award.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago

Everything is "pretty much inevitable" if you have the power of hindsight.