5 ms·

Now that's some nonsense. iPhone was ways ahead in usability compared to everything else back then. For all the faults of Apple, they needed to define how sma

Now that's some nonsense. iPhone was ways ahead in usability compared to everything else back then. For all the faults of Apple, they needed to define how smartphones look like and act. Mobile OSes were horrible pain to use. People tolerated that because there was nothing else out there.

zakius 5y ago
iphone always was behind, basic things always were either convoluted or just impossible, ios is the most painful mobile os I ever encountered
- oblio 5y ago
  It wasn't behind the first year or so. It's not about buttons or even copy-paste as weird as that sounds for a techie. But zooming on a map with your fingers was a game changer. Zooming an imagine with your fingers. Using your fingers to scroll a list, naturally. And lists are probably the most common UI element except for buttons, labels and images. They're for sure the most common complex element.
  - zakius 5y ago
    if it adds some ingenious new features but at the cost of removing some basics it is still behind, that's the whole point of w11 issue
    - oblio 5y ago
      Yeah, but there's a term: "paradigm shift". It wasn't a "few features" (techie speak), it was a "new way of working" (usually marketing speak, but here it was actually true). W11 is a few missing features for an existing way of working. The iPhone had a few missing features for a fundamentally new way of working that was much superior to existing smartphones. Your complaint was like the handlebars on the new bike being hard to push (which I can workaround by pushing harder, up to a point) while the old bike had square wheels and a chassis meant only for square wheels (which I could not work around).
      - zakius 5y ago
        "new way of working" on iphone is using fork to move soup from your pot to bowl instead of ladle, that simply doesn't work pinch to zoom doesn't interfere in any way with easy app installation or easy files transfer, they can coexist (and they do, on android), sync simply doesn't work when you want to quickly drop that one specific file and keep moving, sync doesn't work when one device has much bigger storage than the other, sync doesn't work when you want to easily remove files from one device "paradigm shift" to golden cage is not a good thing, apple intended to take all responsibility from users but at a cost of being unable to do anything efficiently
        oblio 5y ago
        > "paradigm shift" to golden cage is not a good thing, apple intended to take all responsibility from users but at a cost of being unable to do anything efficiently The original iPhone didn't have an app store, apps were supposed to be web apps. If you're going to rewrite history, at least do it well. I get it, you're a techie, just like me. I use Android, I don't like iOS. But to deny that for the average person the iPhone was the first usable smartphone is just silly at this point.
        zakius 5y ago
        how making everything harder made iphone "the first usable smartphone"? that makes no sense
        oblio 5y ago
        As an example navigating a list directly with my fingers is much, much faster and more convenient than navigating it with arrow keys (physical or on-display ones). Navigating a 2D space with my fingers, just dragging around or pinching to zoom, is also much, much faster and more convenient faster than than doing the same with arrow keys (again, either physical or on-display ones). And navigating through the OS and apps, either through lists and 2D spaces (websites, images, maps, videos, etc.) is a lot more common than copying files around on phones. 100:1, probably. Again, some techie/advanced functionality was lost at the start, but the time and frustration savings from those basic yet intuitive features heavily outweighed their loss. If you don't agree with this, I guess you either haven't tried pre-iPhone smartphones or you just have a very unorthodox opinion and I'm not very keen to continue this conversation.
- llampx 5y ago
  What basic things are convoluted or impossible on iPhone/ iphone OS?
  - zakius 5y ago
    files transfer, installing apps unwelcome in the main store, using proper contextual content blocker
  - Arainach 5y ago
    Things on the home screen auto arrange. I can't leave things at the bottom near my thumbs where it's most ergonomic. It took until last year to get an apps list and not have to have everything pinned to my start screen.
vagrantJin 5y ago
- numpad0 5y ago
  Most of phones you might be thinking is probably post-iPhone. Just couples but I used couple pre-iPhone smartphone OS and oh boy they sucked.
  - neoberg 5y ago
    I still remember my HP Ipaq 514. i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
- desiarnezjr 5y ago
  No. IMO they were awful. Sony had Symbian (?) licensed as I recall on some models, and that was the best of it. Moto, HTC, and Blackberry - ugh. My last two pre-iPhone phones (and I've used many in between Androids - every other phone until about 4 years ago) were Treo with a version of PalmOS and it basically froze anytime you looked at it funny, and a Samsung Windows Mobile device. The hardware was decent enough, but Windows Mobile deserved the death it had. Don't even get me started on the Blackberry devices of the era. Missed the keyboard still though.
- design-material 5y ago
  The iPhone / 3G / 3GS / 4 were so far ahead of what any of their competitors were doing that it can be difficult to conceptualise it in hindsight. HTC, Sony, Moto, RIM - there's a reason these companies barely exist in the same form anymore. Samsung were the first to consistently catch-up to Apple - largely because they're official strategy at that point was 'copy Apple'
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  Sorry but none of the offerings were any good I had WindowMobile 4-6 machines, Palms, the Nokia N61 and blackberries they all sucked. The iPhone was 10 years ahead.
- indymike 5y ago

zakius 5y ago

iphone always was behind, basic things always were either convoluted or just impossible, ios is the most painful mobile os I ever encountered

oblio 5y ago
It wasn't behind the first year or so. It's not about buttons or even copy-paste as weird as that sounds for a techie. But zooming on a map with your fingers was a game changer. Zooming an imagine with your fingers. Using your fingers to scroll a list, naturally. And lists are probably the most common UI element except for buttons, labels and images. They're for sure the most common complex element.
- zakius 5y ago
  if it adds some ingenious new features but at the cost of removing some basics it is still behind, that's the whole point of w11 issue
  - oblio 5y ago
    Yeah, but there's a term: "paradigm shift". It wasn't a "few features" (techie speak), it was a "new way of working" (usually marketing speak, but here it was actually true). W11 is a few missing features for an existing way of working. The iPhone had a few missing features for a fundamentally new way of working that was much superior to existing smartphones. Your complaint was like the handlebars on the new bike being hard to push (which I can workaround by pushing harder, up to a point) while the old bike had square wheels and a chassis meant only for square wheels (which I could not work around).
    - zakius 5y ago
      "new way of working" on iphone is using fork to move soup from your pot to bowl instead of ladle, that simply doesn't work pinch to zoom doesn't interfere in any way with easy app installation or easy files transfer, they can coexist (and they do, on android), sync simply doesn't work when you want to quickly drop that one specific file and keep moving, sync doesn't work when one device has much bigger storage than the other, sync doesn't work when you want to easily remove files from one device "paradigm shift" to golden cage is not a good thing, apple intended to take all responsibility from users but at a cost of being unable to do anything efficiently
      - oblio 5y ago
        > "paradigm shift" to golden cage is not a good thing, apple intended to take all responsibility from users but at a cost of being unable to do anything efficiently The original iPhone didn't have an app store, apps were supposed to be web apps. If you're going to rewrite history, at least do it well. I get it, you're a techie, just like me. I use Android, I don't like iOS. But to deny that for the average person the iPhone was the first usable smartphone is just silly at this point.
        zakius 5y ago
        how making everything harder made iphone "the first usable smartphone"? that makes no sense
        oblio 5y ago
        As an example navigating a list directly with my fingers is much, much faster and more convenient than navigating it with arrow keys (physical or on-display ones). Navigating a 2D space with my fingers, just dragging around or pinching to zoom, is also much, much faster and more convenient faster than than doing the same with arrow keys (again, either physical or on-display ones). And navigating through the OS and apps, either through lists and 2D spaces (websites, images, maps, videos, etc.) is a lot more common than copying files around on phones. 100:1, probably. Again, some techie/advanced functionality was lost at the start, but the time and frustration savings from those basic yet intuitive features heavily outweighed their loss. If you don't agree with this, I guess you either haven't tried pre-iPhone smartphones or you just have a very unorthodox opinion and I'm not very keen to continue this conversation.
llampx 5y ago
What basic things are convoluted or impossible on iPhone/ iphone OS?
- zakius 5y ago
  files transfer, installing apps unwelcome in the main store, using proper contextual content blocker
- Arainach 5y ago
  Things on the home screen auto arrange. I can't leave things at the bottom near my thumbs where it's most ergonomic. It took until last year to get an apps list and not have to have everything pinned to my start screen.

vagrantJin 5y ago

numpad0 5y ago
Most of phones you might be thinking is probably post-iPhone. Just couples but I used couple pre-iPhone smartphone OS and oh boy they sucked.
- neoberg 5y ago
  I still remember my HP Ipaq 514. i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
desiarnezjr 5y ago
No. IMO they were awful. Sony had Symbian (?) licensed as I recall on some models, and that was the best of it. Moto, HTC, and Blackberry - ugh. My last two pre-iPhone phones (and I've used many in between Androids - every other phone until about 4 years ago) were Treo with a version of PalmOS and it basically froze anytime you looked at it funny, and a Samsung Windows Mobile device. The hardware was decent enough, but Windows Mobile deserved the death it had. Don't even get me started on the Blackberry devices of the era. Missed the keyboard still though.
design-material 5y ago
The iPhone / 3G / 3GS / 4 were so far ahead of what any of their competitors were doing that it can be difficult to conceptualise it in hindsight. HTC, Sony, Moto, RIM - there's a reason these companies barely exist in the same form anymore. Samsung were the first to consistently catch-up to Apple - largely because they're official strategy at that point was 'copy Apple'
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
Sorry but none of the offerings were any good I had WindowMobile 4-6 machines, Palms, the Nokia N61 and blackberries they all sucked. The iPhone was 10 years ahead.
indymike 5y ago