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There is that also a matter of economics too. For example take the iPhone. All the bits for an iPhone were in place easily 10 years before that. Yet we did n
by sumtechguy 4y ago
There is that also a matter of economics too.
For example take the iPhone. All the bits for an iPhone were in place easily 10 years before that. Yet we did not have it. It took breaking the idea of paying 40 bucks a megabyte, or before that some amount of money per min to talk on land line and over the air. Once those two things were 'gone' we got what we consider a modern cell phone. Sometimes it means taking away things so others can move into their place. In my example the economics of running a phone company had to change before an innovation could happen.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoI think you're underestimating the amount of innovation required to make the original iPhone. The hardware required an extremely thin battery, a super-efficient processor, a high quality display with a built-in capacitative sensing grid, robust(ish) glass, and very small carrier, WiFi, and Bluetooth hardware. The visible software required a good touch OS with a secure file system, while the underlying carrier stack relied on data compression and adaptive line quality innovations, under a complex mix of networking protocols. The productisation required a complex logistics chain that sourced raw materials and converted them into phones at unprecedented scale with extreme precision. Very little of this existed in 1997. ADSL was just starting to be a thing, WiFi was still fairly exotic, and most people were still using dial-up. Windows 95 was everywhere and OS X hadn't been invented yet. Most phones used GPRS. Products like the Nokia Communicators might look somewhat iPhone like, in a bricky way, but they just didn't offer the same intuitive pocket-sized touch screen benefits. Modern phones are very literally the summary of modern materials science, microelectronics, comms and data compression theory, industrial engineering, and some CS, in a package that hides the physics and engineering in an almost effortless way. They seem simple, but they're anything but.
- _trampeltier 4y agoI never understood, why there was no Palm with phone in the mid 90s.
- ekianjo 4y agoearly 2000s well before the Iphone you had PocketPCs with phone and wifi connection and a lot of apps
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quickthrowman 4y agoGoogle “Motorola DynaTac” and you’ll see why, that’s the first phone I remember seeing in the mid 90s.