3 ms·

It was a lot less of a paradigm shift at the time than it seems like in hindsight, actually. In fact there were competing phones with Windows Mobile or Symbian

by ajross 3y ago

It was a lot less of a paradigm shift at the time than it seems like in hindsight, actually. In fact there were competing phones with Windows Mobile or Symbian that did have similar hardware specs. (Really if you have to pick the single defining hardware innovation of the iPhone, it was the full slate capacitative touchscreen.) And in some areas the iPhone was clearly behind, shipping with a EDGE-only radio at a time where other networks were rapidly deploying 3G hardware. But the big missing bit was the app store, which didn't exist yet. When the iPhone shipped, it was a very expensive phone with a web browser, and nothing else. Jobs was going on stage saying that web apps were all anyone needed, and people were laughing at him. When the app store was finally released it only barely beat Android to market. It wasn't really until the 3G/3GS generation that the product really hit its stride, and a few more revs after that before it became the sine qua non accessory for the tech set. In hindsight, yeah, that was a huge inflection point. But at the time there were a lot of reasons to prefer other devices.

wrs 3y ago
The iPhone was a software innovation that was years ahead of the industry at the time, enabled by that one hardware innovation that you’re sounding rather dismissive of.
- ajross 3y ago
  I don't think I'm "dismissing" anything. I replied to a comment that made what I think is an incorrect point about how the product was received at release. It's too easy to take a successful product and mythologize its origins, when in fact history was complicated and in a lot of ways the early iPhone kinda sucked. Again, there were existing app ecosystems on Symbian/Nokia and Windows, and none of that stuff, or anything like it, ran on an iPhone. You couldn't even get your email on the device outside of a handful of open source web clients (its inability to run the gmail client was a big hole, heavily reported at the time).
  - wrs 3y ago
    The early iPhone sucked in ways similar to how the early iPod sucked, and was received with similar reactions. In both cases, the folks who predicted failure focused too much on the technical deficiencies of the V1 product and not enough on the game-changing difference in approach. In the iPhone’s case that meant betting fully on a multitouch screen with a rich, smoothly animated GUI, and wresting software control away from the carriers. I think the latter in particular was not sufficiently appreciated.
    - ajross 3y ago
      Are you trying to argue with me as a proxy for the linked article? I didn't write it, and I didn't say any of that stuff you seem to be responding to. I'm explaining why it wasn't seen as a paradigm shift at the time, and that its dominance evolved over time (which is hardly surprising). Hyperbolizing history is generally a bad idea. The iPhone, as released, was a very mixed product.
      - wrs 3y ago
        I disagree with exactly that: I watched the intro live as someone in the industry (so it isn't "history" to me), and I and many others, including Andy Rubin [0], definitely saw it as a paradigm shift at the time, for the two reasons I stated. BTW, it was also a common belief in the industry that the emphasis on web applications was basically a smokescreen, because the SDK was not ready and Steve didn't want to focus attention on something that didn't exist yet. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-over-the-day-the-iphone-was-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-...
  - spectre3d 3y ago
    >You couldn't even get your email on the device outside of a handful of open source web clients Totally false. The first iPhone shipped with Mail, which handled POP and IMAP accounts very well, including gmail accounts.
EdSharkey 3y ago
Jobs was ahead of his time, and he pushed the vision of HTML5 and offline apps. He was resistant to app stores, I suspect, because he wanted maximum freedom for users in the future rather than the corporatized, schlock-filled, freedom restricting, walled garden the post-Jobs Apple brought. You see his vision as a big miss. I see his vision as evidence of good taste and also an eventuality.
- ajross 3y ago
  Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped. It just wasn't ready, so he spun a yarn about web apps (and yes: he was ahead of his time, and these days you can totally do that, but now that Apple owns that 30% fee, they're decidedly anti web apps).
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    > Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped. This is a myth. Jobs was genuinely against a native SDK and made the final decision to go for it on the 2nd of October 2007. Then Apple had to rush out the first version of the iPhoneOS SDK in just over three months. This is documented in contemporaneous emails produced during discovery for the Epic trial. https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/04/this-one-email-explains-apple/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/04/this-one-email-explains-ap... > now that Apple owns that 30% fee It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%.
    - ajross 3y ago
      > It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%. Right. And by the same logic Amazon makes exactly zero revenue from AWS, which is completely free for "almost everybody". You knew what I meant.
      - 3y ago
lttlrck 3y ago
How could it not be a paradigm shift if its impact is still very visible in all the top selling smartphones today? Both in form factor and software? It changed industry's and the public's perception of what a "phone" could be.

by ajross 3y ago

wrs 3y ago

The iPhone was a software innovation that was years ahead of the industry at the time, enabled by that one hardware innovation that you’re sounding rather dismissive of.

ajross 3y ago
I don't think I'm "dismissing" anything. I replied to a comment that made what I think is an incorrect point about how the product was received at release. It's too easy to take a successful product and mythologize its origins, when in fact history was complicated and in a lot of ways the early iPhone kinda sucked. Again, there were existing app ecosystems on Symbian/Nokia and Windows, and none of that stuff, or anything like it, ran on an iPhone. You couldn't even get your email on the device outside of a handful of open source web clients (its inability to run the gmail client was a big hole, heavily reported at the time).
- wrs 3y ago
  The early iPhone sucked in ways similar to how the early iPod sucked, and was received with similar reactions. In both cases, the folks who predicted failure focused too much on the technical deficiencies of the V1 product and not enough on the game-changing difference in approach. In the iPhone’s case that meant betting fully on a multitouch screen with a rich, smoothly animated GUI, and wresting software control away from the carriers. I think the latter in particular was not sufficiently appreciated.
  - ajross 3y ago
    Are you trying to argue with me as a proxy for the linked article? I didn't write it, and I didn't say any of that stuff you seem to be responding to. I'm explaining why it wasn't seen as a paradigm shift at the time, and that its dominance evolved over time (which is hardly surprising). Hyperbolizing history is generally a bad idea. The iPhone, as released, was a very mixed product.
    - wrs 3y ago
      I disagree with exactly that: I watched the intro live as someone in the industry (so it isn't "history" to me), and I and many others, including Andy Rubin [0], definitely saw it as a paradigm shift at the time, for the two reasons I stated. BTW, it was also a common belief in the industry that the emphasis on web applications was basically a smokescreen, because the SDK was not ready and Steve didn't want to focus attention on something that didn't exist yet. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-over-the-day-the-iphone-was-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5229618/android-started-...
- spectre3d 3y ago
  >You couldn't even get your email on the device outside of a handful of open source web clients Totally false. The first iPhone shipped with Mail, which handled POP and IMAP accounts very well, including gmail accounts.

EdSharkey 3y ago

Jobs was ahead of his time, and he pushed the vision of HTML5 and offline apps. He was resistant to app stores, I suspect, because he wanted maximum freedom for users in the future rather than the corporatized, schlock-filled, freedom restricting, walled garden the post-Jobs Apple brought. You see his vision as a big miss. I see his vision as evidence of good taste and also an eventuality.

ajross 3y ago
Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped. It just wasn't ready, so he spun a yarn about web apps (and yes: he was ahead of his time, and these days you can totally do that, but now that Apple owns that 30% fee, they're decidedly anti web apps).
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped. This is a myth. Jobs was genuinely against a native SDK and made the final decision to go for it on the 2nd of October 2007. Then Apple had to rush out the first version of the iPhoneOS SDK in just over three months. This is documented in contemporaneous emails produced during discovery for the Epic trial. https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/04/this-one-email-explains-apple/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/04/this-one-email-explains-ap... > now that Apple owns that 30% fee It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%. Right. And by the same logic Amazon makes exactly zero revenue from AWS, which is completely free for "almost everybody". You knew what I meant.
    - 3y ago

lttlrck 3y ago

How could it not be a paradigm shift if its impact is still very visible in all the top selling smartphones today? Both in form factor and software? It changed industry's and the public's perception of what a "phone" could be.