4 ms·

It didn't make them worse. Highest market cap on the planet.

by Mike_12345 4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago
It didn't rescued them from insolvency, so who cares.
- Mike_12345 4y ago
  That was 26 years ago and it is irrelevant.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I wonder how the world would be different if Microsoft had just let them die. Would it be better or worse? Would we all have slate-style smartphones now, or would they have taken much longer to arise?
  - sofixa 4y ago
    The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone, it was just the flashiest (previous ones were oriented at business users), so IMO we certainly would be in the same place, just slightly later and possibly with more choice (maybe Nokia would have survived with Symbian/MeeGo, maybe Microsoft would have managed to pull off Windows Phone, etc.).
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Unless there were some phones I never saw, the iPhone was the first slate-style phone that you used with your fingers. Before that, everything had buttons (like the Blackberry, which kept keyboards until they finally died), or had crappy resistive touchscreens that you needed a stylus to use. The iPhone was the first one I remember that had a glass screen with capacitive touchscreen, needed no stylus, and didn't try to copy the Windows UI on a tiny screen.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/21/nokia_hildon_the_great_lost_platform/?page=4 https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/21/nokia_hildon_the_grea...
    - testplzignore 4y ago
      > The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone This is correct. The first capacitive touchscreen phone was the LG Prada.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        TIL! I never heard of this before, somehow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada Interestingly, it came out just before the iPhone, and LG even alleged that Apple had stolen the idea from them. Considering how Jobs stole a bunch of ideas from PARC, and Apple really doesn't have a history of inventing anything, but rather taking other peoples' ideas and commercializing them better, it seems very plausible.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I think it would be pretty much the same as the way it is now.

It didn't make them worse. Highest market cap on the planet.

pjmlp 4y ago

It didn't rescued them from insolvency, so who cares.

Mike_12345 4y ago
That was 26 years ago and it is irrelevant.
midoridensha 4y ago
I wonder how the world would be different if Microsoft had just let them die. Would it be better or worse? Would we all have slate-style smartphones now, or would they have taken much longer to arise?
- sofixa 4y ago
  The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone, it was just the flashiest (previous ones were oriented at business users), so IMO we certainly would be in the same place, just slightly later and possibly with more choice (maybe Nokia would have survived with Symbian/MeeGo, maybe Microsoft would have managed to pull off Windows Phone, etc.).
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Unless there were some phones I never saw, the iPhone was the first slate-style phone that you used with your fingers. Before that, everything had buttons (like the Blackberry, which kept keyboards until they finally died), or had crappy resistive touchscreens that you needed a stylus to use. The iPhone was the first one I remember that had a glass screen with capacitive touchscreen, needed no stylus, and didn't try to copy the Windows UI on a tiny screen.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/21/nokia_hildon_the_great_lost_platform/?page=4 https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/21/nokia_hildon_the_grea...
  - testplzignore 4y ago
    > The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone This is correct. The first capacitive touchscreen phone was the LG Prada.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      TIL! I never heard of this before, somehow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada Interestingly, it came out just before the iPhone, and LG even alleged that Apple had stolen the idea from them. Considering how Jobs stole a bunch of ideas from PARC, and Apple really doesn't have a history of inventing anything, but rather taking other peoples' ideas and commercializing them better, it seems very plausible.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I think it would be pretty much the same as the way it is now.