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On the other hand, iPhone OS (or how was it called in early days) was a clear inspiration for Android. You cannot deny Apple basically invented many phone UI me

by runn1ng 15y ago

On the other hand, iPhone OS (or how was it called in early days) was a clear inspiration for Android. You cannot deny Apple basically invented many phone UI metaphors, that were directly copied (and I don't mean it in negative sense) into Android UI. And to your other point... closed nature has its upsides too. Look at gaming consoles, they work quite well despite being crazy controlled. And Apple never wanted to dominate the whole phone market... if you remember the iPhone introduction, they didn't want to own the whole market. They defined its own category, basically :)

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I would argue that the best gaming console of all time is the PC.
- mambodog 15y ago
  I would argue that the PC is a terrible gaming console, as crappy drivers and graphics APIs (and the wide variety of hardware) rob PC games of huge amounts of the total performance the hardware is capable of.
ori_b 15y ago
I'm not sure about that. The iPhone UI is definitely a good piece of engineering, and it's certainly more polished than what came before, but I don't think it invented anything novel.
- jedmund 15y ago
  UI is something that is engineered? I'd hate to live on the planet you live on, buddy.
  - ori_b 15y ago
    Engineered -- planned with a purpose, designed, put together in order to accomplish a goal. In what world is a UI not engineered?
zmmmmm 15y ago
I totally acknowledge that the iPhone provided a huge leap forward, and that it inspired / altered the direction android took - I'm very grateful for it. It is precisely because it was so good that it was such a threat to the technology landscape. We could easily have descended into a windows like era of domination by one company, but this time with the company having complete control over every layer - hardware, software, even content. However we didn't, partly thanks to strategic mistakes that Jobs made (we could have a whole discussion about what those were but I think it would be counterproductive wrt this thread). I think almost like a natural ecosystem the software world needs both open and closed systems in balance. Each one moves us forward in different ways at different times. It is when they get out of balance that we get stuck (the "windows" era being a good example).

by runn1ng 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

I would argue that the best gaming console of all time is the PC.

mambodog 15y ago
I would argue that the PC is a terrible gaming console, as crappy drivers and graphics APIs (and the wide variety of hardware) rob PC games of huge amounts of the total performance the hardware is capable of.

ori_b 15y ago

I'm not sure about that. The iPhone UI is definitely a good piece of engineering, and it's certainly more polished than what came before, but I don't think it invented anything novel.

jedmund 15y ago
UI is something that is engineered? I'd hate to live on the planet you live on, buddy.
- ori_b 15y ago
  Engineered -- planned with a purpose, designed, put together in order to accomplish a goal. In what world is a UI not engineered?

zmmmmm 15y ago

I totally acknowledge that the iPhone provided a huge leap forward, and that it inspired / altered the direction android took - I'm very grateful for it. It is precisely because it was so good that it was such a threat to the technology landscape. We could easily have descended into a windows like era of domination by one company, but this time with the company having complete control over every layer - hardware, software, even content. However we didn't, partly thanks to strategic mistakes that Jobs made (we could have a whole discussion about what those were but I think it would be counterproductive wrt this thread). I think almost like a natural ecosystem the software world needs both open and closed systems in balance. Each one moves us forward in different ways at different times. It is when they get out of balance that we get stuck (the "windows" era being a good example).