4 ms·

The iPhone is unironically one of the greatest products in human history. The world pre and post the arrival of the iPhone is very different.

laumars 4y ago
I’m not going to deny that the iPhone was a successful product but what people often forget is that the world was already shifting that way. Feature phones could already do what the iPhone did (and in some cases even more). Multi-touch devices were available before the iPhone. PDAs had also been about for years and did everything the iPhone could do and more. And Android wasn’t far behind the iPhone and also improved upon the original iPhone. In fact the original iPhone wasn’t even that good compared to the competition. It was lacking a lot of features people considered “must haves”. Native applications (everything was web apps originally), copy/paste, the ability to background applications, etc. And Ballmers point about the lack of a hardware keyboard was absolutely right for that era. Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do. And so people often credit the iPhone as being uniquely revolutionary. It certainly was industry changing but it wasn’t singularly responsible for that change. I say this as an iPhone user with an Apple Watch and other Apple hardware. So I do buy into the Apple ecosystem. But I’m also an old fart who has lived long enough to have first hand experience, both as a user and as a software engineer, pre and post the iPhone.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  No one had the sheer power of Apple though. In Australia, when the first iPhone hit, Apple was able to dictate certain things with carriers if they wanted to carry the iPhone. Plans suddenly got better and cheaper. You could just walk into an Apple store and get an unlocked phone (although the 3GS was first available only through carriers). iPhone launches had people camping out for days so Apple managed to exert their influence for years. Before this, data was really expensive, phones were all locked. None of the other device makers exerted their power like this. Or even had that sort of power. The iPad also had a similar effect with data only plans for iPads.
  - laumars 4y ago
    I can’t speak for the Australian market but in the U.K. it was a very different story. The iPhone arrived locked into one specific carrier (O2 IIRC) when most handsets were available on multiple carriers. As a result, a contract for the original iPhone was more expensive than most other handsets. There certainly where handsets that were locked to specific providers but even in those cases it was much easier to unlock them than it was to unlock the original iPhone. In fact the iPhone has actively worked against interoperability. Take charging, everything has standardised in USB-C except for the iPhone. Their app ecosystem is another walled garden (other handsets ran a third party OS but Apple rolled their own). Lack of a support for SD cards, etc. If anything, one of the biggest achievements of the iPhone is successfully programming people to be OK with being locked out of their own hardware. A trend we’ve seen Google, Microsoft, Tesla and others follow suit in. If it weren’t for the fact that they are (presently) strong advocates for privacy, it would be hard to say something positive about Apple. But given the current technological climate, they’re definitely the lesser of two evils.
- Normille 4y ago
  >Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do Nope. See my previous post on this. I'm unfortunately old enough to have been around and involved in Apple forums pre-iPhone and there's no re-writing of history here. There really was genuine excitement at the prospect of an Apple phone. Maybe we were all a bit more naive back then. But it did seem at the time like Apple had the magic touch and anything they came up with would be revolutionary. It's a long long time since I've had any interest in Apple or their products. But I wonder if the same excited anticipation still exists today [eg. with rumours of Apple producing an electric vehicle]?... or was it mainly due to Steve Jobs's cult of personality and mastery of hyperbole.
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    > Nope. See my previous post on this. They absolutely did. Just look at plenty of confused people in this very thread, who attribute things like downfall of standalone GPS devices or the rise of mobile app market to the original iPhone that didn't even have these features at all, or praising it for including sensors (camera, accelerometer) that were already common in smartphones back then.
    - Normille 4y ago
      Now you're nit-picking. Your original comment was that Apple had rewritten history to make the iPhone seem revolutionary, when it wasn't. Which I disagree with. As another old fart, I was there at the time and remember just how revolutionary it seemed on launch --not as rewritten history, years later. Now you're using the fact that people can't remember for sure which iPhone model introduced feature X or feature Y as evidence that history was rewritten by Apple, when all it shows is that, years later, people can't accurately remember the minutiae of which details changed between which models.
      - seba_dos1 4y ago
        I was there as well. I witnessed the announcement of OpenMoko, iPhone, Android, drooled over Nokia Internet Tablets that were way outside my price range, browsed discussions about them on Slashdot like crazy. Got excited over rumors about a smartphone from Apple just to be extremely disappointed once it actually arrived. There really wasn't anything revolutionary in actual devices, the whole "revolution" was cultural and marketing-induced. The craze over iPhones wouldn't have happened at all without iPods being as popular as they were, and other smartphones were already heading towards everything Apple did anyway. There was a period of time where Apple was actually bringing some innovations to the table a few years later, but that didn't last long anyway.
gambiting 4y ago
That's like a funniest thing I read all day, assuming you are being serious. Was an iPhone revolutionary in terms of smartphones? Sure. But calling it a greatest invention in human history, within 100 years of literally thousands of other groundbreaking inventions, is just hilarious.
- westoncb 4y ago
  It’s not that crazy, assuming they’re equating it with everyone having a general purpose computer in their pocket (probably a greater impact on society than the previous personal computer revolution). But yeah, maybe a bit over the top...
  - gambiting 4y ago
    I mean, even if you are, what does that have to do with an iPhone specifically? People had all kinds of smartphones before iPhone even launched(that were perfectly fine for browsing the internet, reading email, taking and sharing photos etc.....even if it wasn't the most polished experience), and even for years after it was just a weird curiosity that only rich people could afford(outside of select few markets like US). Calling it the biggest achievement of humanity reads like a really poor joke, unless I don't know, you are relatively rich and iPhone was your first smartphone, then I guess it felt revolutionary, but that's an extremely narrow perspective, and again, comparing it to human achievements of just the past 100 years it pales completely, for the simplest example I'd say the internet was a bigger and better invention.
    - seba_dos1 4y ago
      > People had all kinds of smartphones before iPhone even launched Not only that, but Apple never even had (or was anywhere close to having) a majority on that market. The actual popularity of modern-day smartphone skyrocketed due to Android devices replacing all sorts of feature phones.
- Normille 4y ago
  I'd agree as far as the "i" part of "iPhone" goes. In my opinion, the internet is right up there with the greatest inventions in human history.
a_humean 4y ago
The iPhone was/is a good product, but I think mass indoor plumbing and the washing machine along with many other inventions ranks higher than the iPhone.
- laumars 4y ago
  Decimal, the printing press, light bulbs, the power grid, telegrams, landlines, wireless data transmission (radio, TV, cell phones), computing machines, transistors, ARPNET, WWW, etc… to name a few. All of which revolutionised humanity and were needed for the iPhone to ever exist. But also all of which were evolutionary ideas that emerged from several inventions predating it, already inching technology in that direction. In short, we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
  - 8bitsrule 4y ago
    Was reading the thoughts of a living old-timer the other day, and to them running water was the killer app. After that, indoor toilets. Landlines were also important. Walkie-talkies, less so.
Normille 4y ago
No matter what your opinion of Apple [and mine is pretty low!] it's churlish to deny this. Yes, people wil point out that Phone X had a touchscreen, Phone Y had a browser, Phone Z had something else. But the iPhone was the first phone to bring them all together in one package. I used to run an Apple user forum way back before the iPhone was released, when all we had were the occasional rumour that Apple 'might be' thinking of bringing out a phone. Smartphones are so ubiquitous now that I reckon people forget just how much excited anticipation there was at the prospect that Apple would do for the phone what they'd recently done for computers [remember how revolutionary the coloured iMacs seemed at the time?] and portable music [the iPod]. Back then no-one was enthusiastic about their phones. They were just some utilitarian gadget you carried, like a wallet, a pen or your car keys and there was an almost messianic belief that, if Apple brought out a phone it would be an equally miraculous device. The launch of the iPhone actually kick-started [for better or worse] the promotion of the formerly humble phone to the ranks of 'gadgets you dreamt of owning'

laumars 4y ago

I’m not going to deny that the iPhone was a successful product but what people often forget is that the world was already shifting that way. Feature phones could already do what the iPhone did (and in some cases even more). Multi-touch devices were available before the iPhone. PDAs had also been about for years and did everything the iPhone could do and more. And Android wasn’t far behind the iPhone and also improved upon the original iPhone. In fact the original iPhone wasn’t even that good compared to the competition. It was lacking a lot of features people considered “must haves”. Native applications (everything was web apps originally), copy/paste, the ability to background applications, etc. And Ballmers point about the lack of a hardware keyboard was absolutely right for that era. Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do. And so people often credit the iPhone as being uniquely revolutionary. It certainly was industry changing but it wasn’t singularly responsible for that change. I say this as an iPhone user with an Apple Watch and other Apple hardware. So I do buy into the Apple ecosystem. But I’m also an old fart who has lived long enough to have first hand experience, both as a user and as a software engineer, pre and post the iPhone.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
No one had the sheer power of Apple though. In Australia, when the first iPhone hit, Apple was able to dictate certain things with carriers if they wanted to carry the iPhone. Plans suddenly got better and cheaper. You could just walk into an Apple store and get an unlocked phone (although the 3GS was first available only through carriers). iPhone launches had people camping out for days so Apple managed to exert their influence for years. Before this, data was really expensive, phones were all locked. None of the other device makers exerted their power like this. Or even had that sort of power. The iPad also had a similar effect with data only plans for iPads.
- laumars 4y ago
  I can’t speak for the Australian market but in the U.K. it was a very different story. The iPhone arrived locked into one specific carrier (O2 IIRC) when most handsets were available on multiple carriers. As a result, a contract for the original iPhone was more expensive than most other handsets. There certainly where handsets that were locked to specific providers but even in those cases it was much easier to unlock them than it was to unlock the original iPhone. In fact the iPhone has actively worked against interoperability. Take charging, everything has standardised in USB-C except for the iPhone. Their app ecosystem is another walled garden (other handsets ran a third party OS but Apple rolled their own). Lack of a support for SD cards, etc. If anything, one of the biggest achievements of the iPhone is successfully programming people to be OK with being locked out of their own hardware. A trend we’ve seen Google, Microsoft, Tesla and others follow suit in. If it weren’t for the fact that they are (presently) strong advocates for privacy, it would be hard to say something positive about Apple. But given the current technological climate, they’re definitely the lesser of two evils.
Normille 4y ago
>Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do Nope. See my previous post on this. I'm unfortunately old enough to have been around and involved in Apple forums pre-iPhone and there's no re-writing of history here. There really was genuine excitement at the prospect of an Apple phone. Maybe we were all a bit more naive back then. But it did seem at the time like Apple had the magic touch and anything they came up with would be revolutionary. It's a long long time since I've had any interest in Apple or their products. But I wonder if the same excited anticipation still exists today [eg. with rumours of Apple producing an electric vehicle]?... or was it mainly due to Steve Jobs's cult of personality and mastery of hyperbole.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  > Nope. See my previous post on this. They absolutely did. Just look at plenty of confused people in this very thread, who attribute things like downfall of standalone GPS devices or the rise of mobile app market to the original iPhone that didn't even have these features at all, or praising it for including sensors (camera, accelerometer) that were already common in smartphones back then.
  - Normille 4y ago
    Now you're nit-picking. Your original comment was that Apple had rewritten history to make the iPhone seem revolutionary, when it wasn't. Which I disagree with. As another old fart, I was there at the time and remember just how revolutionary it seemed on launch --not as rewritten history, years later. Now you're using the fact that people can't remember for sure which iPhone model introduced feature X or feature Y as evidence that history was rewritten by Apple, when all it shows is that, years later, people can't accurately remember the minutiae of which details changed between which models.
    - seba_dos1 4y ago
      I was there as well. I witnessed the announcement of OpenMoko, iPhone, Android, drooled over Nokia Internet Tablets that were way outside my price range, browsed discussions about them on Slashdot like crazy. Got excited over rumors about a smartphone from Apple just to be extremely disappointed once it actually arrived. There really wasn't anything revolutionary in actual devices, the whole "revolution" was cultural and marketing-induced. The craze over iPhones wouldn't have happened at all without iPods being as popular as they were, and other smartphones were already heading towards everything Apple did anyway. There was a period of time where Apple was actually bringing some innovations to the table a few years later, but that didn't last long anyway.

gambiting 4y ago

That's like a funniest thing I read all day, assuming you are being serious. Was an iPhone revolutionary in terms of smartphones? Sure. But calling it a greatest invention in human history, within 100 years of literally thousands of other groundbreaking inventions, is just hilarious.

westoncb 4y ago
It’s not that crazy, assuming they’re equating it with everyone having a general purpose computer in their pocket (probably a greater impact on society than the previous personal computer revolution). But yeah, maybe a bit over the top...
- gambiting 4y ago
  I mean, even if you are, what does that have to do with an iPhone specifically? People had all kinds of smartphones before iPhone even launched(that were perfectly fine for browsing the internet, reading email, taking and sharing photos etc.....even if it wasn't the most polished experience), and even for years after it was just a weird curiosity that only rich people could afford(outside of select few markets like US). Calling it the biggest achievement of humanity reads like a really poor joke, unless I don't know, you are relatively rich and iPhone was your first smartphone, then I guess it felt revolutionary, but that's an extremely narrow perspective, and again, comparing it to human achievements of just the past 100 years it pales completely, for the simplest example I'd say the internet was a bigger and better invention.
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    > People had all kinds of smartphones before iPhone even launched Not only that, but Apple never even had (or was anywhere close to having) a majority on that market. The actual popularity of modern-day smartphone skyrocketed due to Android devices replacing all sorts of feature phones.
Normille 4y ago
I'd agree as far as the "i" part of "iPhone" goes. In my opinion, the internet is right up there with the greatest inventions in human history.

a_humean 4y ago

The iPhone was/is a good product, but I think mass indoor plumbing and the washing machine along with many other inventions ranks higher than the iPhone.

laumars 4y ago
Decimal, the printing press, light bulbs, the power grid, telegrams, landlines, wireless data transmission (radio, TV, cell phones), computing machines, transistors, ARPNET, WWW, etc… to name a few. All of which revolutionised humanity and were needed for the iPhone to ever exist. But also all of which were evolutionary ideas that emerged from several inventions predating it, already inching technology in that direction. In short, we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Was reading the thoughts of a living old-timer the other day, and to them running water was the killer app. After that, indoor toilets. Landlines were also important. Walkie-talkies, less so.

Normille 4y ago

No matter what your opinion of Apple [and mine is pretty low!] it's churlish to deny this. Yes, people wil point out that Phone X had a touchscreen, Phone Y had a browser, Phone Z had something else. But the iPhone was the first phone to bring them all together in one package. I used to run an Apple user forum way back before the iPhone was released, when all we had were the occasional rumour that Apple 'might be' thinking of bringing out a phone. Smartphones are so ubiquitous now that I reckon people forget just how much excited anticipation there was at the prospect that Apple would do for the phone what they'd recently done for computers [remember how revolutionary the coloured iMacs seemed at the time?] and portable music [the iPod]. Back then no-one was enthusiastic about their phones. They were just some utilitarian gadget you carried, like a wallet, a pen or your car keys and there was an almost messianic belief that, if Apple brought out a phone it would be an equally miraculous device. The launch of the iPhone actually kick-started [for better or worse] the promotion of the formerly humble phone to the ranks of 'gadgets you dreamt of owning'