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 f

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.