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The iPhone was even worse, it launched without support for third party apps. Steve Jobs said that web apps would take their place. The original iPhone was als

The iPhone was even worse, it launched without support for third party apps. Steve Jobs said that web apps would take their place. The original iPhone was also overpriced and underspecced in some areas and forced you on a crappy phone provider, but it had a significant price drop shortly after release and the iPhone 3G fixed most of the performance issues (mostly around the slow cell modem). Plus Apple released the app store and it was an enormous success, far more than the existing app stores on the Symbian phones.

idopmstuff 3y ago
Is that right? Man, did not recall that... funny how the state of apps today has colored my recollection.
- mandeepj 3y ago
  > Is that right? Absolutely! I also remember those chain of events exactly that way. They are also documented in Steve Jobs biography as well.
- mh- 3y ago
  Matches my recollection of it. iOS 3.0, which launched alongside the iPhone 3GS, is when it got copy-paste functionality. Apple has historically been very comfortable shipping devices without "table stakes" functionality - waiting until they have an implementation they like. Or sometimes never shipping it, and leaving it to third parties. My iPads still don't have a calculator app.
  - izacus 3y ago
    It also kinda needs to be said that iPhone really took off after AppStore (and 3G and copy/paste and other stuff) became a thing. Before that the market share wasn't that great.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      The market share wasn't great because it wasn't sold globally. Once that happened market share really took off.
      - jdminhbg 3y ago
        And in the markets it did exist, the carrier options were limited, usually to the worst carriers, because those were the carriers who were desperate enough to accept Apple's terms.
- rahoulb 3y ago
  Even John Gruber (Daring Fireball) described it as a shit sandwich from Apple.
mongol 3y ago
> Steve Jobs said that web apps would take their place Yes I remember this. But he must have known their plans and basically lied about it.
- justinator 3y ago
  Sounds convenient, but I remember the backlash was so bad from this news, they rushed out a dev SDK to add that support in. Different time. "No Flash" sounded like a WTF, too.
  - jdewerd 3y ago
    Yeah, "webapps are all you need" is the one time I can recall Steve Jobs getting booed on stage.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      And now developers (not end users) are whining about not being able to do good [sic] PWAs Edit: Users may not know what a PWA is. But they do know what web apps based on Electron and I have never heard any user say that they love Electron apps and they would really love to have the same experience on mobile
      - hombre_fatal 3y ago
        [dead]
      - dnissley 3y ago
        I mean users do complain about not being able to sideload apps, which is an issue that is at least partially/minimally addressed through PWAs.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        How many users outside of geeks complain about side loading?
Retric 3y ago
It forced you in a crappy phone provider with unlimited data. Having a better than average phone browser wasn’t such a big deal, having a browser you could use without thinking about it was huge.
- matwood 3y ago
  > having a browser you could use without thinking about it was huge This right here. People forget things like roaming and data charges. $500+ phone bills were not uncommon for business travelers. Data charges made smartphones almost a non-starter for the average person. Apple broke that logjam.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Hardly in Europe, the contracts with data plans were mostly the same for iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Java feature phones, Windows CE/Pocket PC. Worse even, as while the others had pre paid plans, iPhone required a 2 year contract.
- myko 3y ago
  and they weren't crappy everywhere, though admittedly they were extremely bad in Silicon Valley until iPhone opened up to other providers, so they get that reputation among tech enthusiasts from sites like HN that are SV-centric
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    It was 2G. It was crappy everywhere. My dumb phone on Sprint had faster internet speeds
  - Exoristos 3y ago
    They worked great in NYC.
  - matwood 3y ago
    It was Edge, ie 2.5g. It was very slow everywhere it worked at all. But, as the poster said, internet all the time with a flat rate plan was huge. For me, it really changed how I thought about the internet when I had it always with me with zero cost concerns.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
Sure, but that was at a time when there weren't really apps
- CharlesW 3y ago
  There definitely were, but feature phone apps weren't great (for reasons involving hardware, app platforms, and carriers), and smartphone (Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian) app distribution was mostly decentralized. Apple's innovation in the mobile app space was the App Store ecosystem.
scarface_74 3y ago
The original iPhone though did come with the YouTube app built in and it’s major use cases were according to Jobs were - a phone, an internet device and an iPod. The day the iPhone was introduced, the CEO of Google was on stage. One of the major use cases for the Vision Pro is video and there ars no native apps for the two most popular video sites. The day that the iPad was introduced. The CEO of Netflix was on stage.
- shawnc 3y ago
  Wasn't the CEO of Disney on stage when the Vision Pro was introduced/announced? From an IP standpoint having Disney on stage over Netflix seems like the better choice...
- jwells89 3y ago
  I wish so much that YouTube would allow fully featured, non-hacky third party clients again, even if only for paid users (similar to how Spotify used to). The clean platform-convention-respecting straightforwardness of the Apple iOS YouTube app is missed.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  Apple directly competes with Netflix, and to some extent Google, considerably more today than they did then.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    And they compete with Disney in streaming. The fact is, Google doesn’t really compete with Apple. The amount of money that Google makes from Android, pales in comparison to what they make from YouTube.
mrcwinn 3y ago
Underspeced? What? Compared to what? This is not even remotely defensible. In its spec it offered a full color multi-touch gesture display —instead of a 132x65 pixel black and white screen. Like Steve Jobs said, products are a series of choices.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  The original iPhone had 2G cellular connection which was slow for the time, and especially silly since, as you point out, it was well powered otherwise. The iPhone 3GS caught it up to other smart phones in the market. It also launched without cut and paste available in the UI, which again, was silly given how it was otherwise an impressive mobile computer.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    While there were obviously people who bought the iPhone as soon as it became available, it was probably the 3GS when it really took off. That's when I replaced my Treo. (I also think I was starting a new and more secure job by then.)
- jandrese 3y ago
  It was EDGE and didn't have enough memory to run the browser well, which caused significant slowdowns. Granted, it was still better than literally every other phone browser at the time, but that didn't mean it was a good as it could have been. The iPhone 3G was a significant upgrade.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    > but that didn't mean it was a good as it could have been Nothing is, and nothing can be. Not even if you eliminate cost from the equation. Not even if you eliminate manufacturability, or supply chain availability. You're holding the original iPhone to an impossible standard. The iPhone was arguably the best product Apple could have made for that price, to be released on that date. Sure it could have been better and more expensive. It could have been better and further delayed. It could have been better and also worse in some other way.

idopmstuff 3y ago

Is that right? Man, did not recall that... funny how the state of apps today has colored my recollection.

mandeepj 3y ago
> Is that right? Absolutely! I also remember those chain of events exactly that way. They are also documented in Steve Jobs biography as well.
mh- 3y ago
Matches my recollection of it. iOS 3.0, which launched alongside the iPhone 3GS, is when it got copy-paste functionality. Apple has historically been very comfortable shipping devices without "table stakes" functionality - waiting until they have an implementation they like. Or sometimes never shipping it, and leaving it to third parties. My iPads still don't have a calculator app.
- izacus 3y ago
  It also kinda needs to be said that iPhone really took off after AppStore (and 3G and copy/paste and other stuff) became a thing. Before that the market share wasn't that great.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    The market share wasn't great because it wasn't sold globally. Once that happened market share really took off.
    - jdminhbg 3y ago
      And in the markets it did exist, the carrier options were limited, usually to the worst carriers, because those were the carriers who were desperate enough to accept Apple's terms.
rahoulb 3y ago
Even John Gruber (Daring Fireball) described it as a shit sandwich from Apple.

mongol 3y ago

> Steve Jobs said that web apps would take their place Yes I remember this. But he must have known their plans and basically lied about it.

justinator 3y ago
Sounds convenient, but I remember the backlash was so bad from this news, they rushed out a dev SDK to add that support in. Different time. "No Flash" sounded like a WTF, too.
- jdewerd 3y ago
  Yeah, "webapps are all you need" is the one time I can recall Steve Jobs getting booed on stage.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    And now developers (not end users) are whining about not being able to do good [sic] PWAs Edit: Users may not know what a PWA is. But they do know what web apps based on Electron and I have never heard any user say that they love Electron apps and they would really love to have the same experience on mobile
    - hombre_fatal 3y ago
      [dead]
    - dnissley 3y ago
      I mean users do complain about not being able to sideload apps, which is an issue that is at least partially/minimally addressed through PWAs.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        How many users outside of geeks complain about side loading?

Retric 3y ago

It forced you in a crappy phone provider with unlimited data. Having a better than average phone browser wasn’t such a big deal, having a browser you could use without thinking about it was huge.

matwood 3y ago
> having a browser you could use without thinking about it was huge This right here. People forget things like roaming and data charges. $500+ phone bills were not uncommon for business travelers. Data charges made smartphones almost a non-starter for the average person. Apple broke that logjam.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Hardly in Europe, the contracts with data plans were mostly the same for iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Java feature phones, Windows CE/Pocket PC. Worse even, as while the others had pre paid plans, iPhone required a 2 year contract.
myko 3y ago
and they weren't crappy everywhere, though admittedly they were extremely bad in Silicon Valley until iPhone opened up to other providers, so they get that reputation among tech enthusiasts from sites like HN that are SV-centric
- scarface_74 3y ago
  It was 2G. It was crappy everywhere. My dumb phone on Sprint had faster internet speeds
- Exoristos 3y ago
  They worked great in NYC.
- matwood 3y ago
  It was Edge, ie 2.5g. It was very slow everywhere it worked at all. But, as the poster said, internet all the time with a flat rate plan was huge. For me, it really changed how I thought about the internet when I had it always with me with zero cost concerns.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

Sure, but that was at a time when there weren't really apps

CharlesW 3y ago
There definitely were, but feature phone apps weren't great (for reasons involving hardware, app platforms, and carriers), and smartphone (Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian) app distribution was mostly decentralized. Apple's innovation in the mobile app space was the App Store ecosystem.

scarface_74 3y ago

The original iPhone though did come with the YouTube app built in and it’s major use cases were according to Jobs were - a phone, an internet device and an iPod. The day the iPhone was introduced, the CEO of Google was on stage. One of the major use cases for the Vision Pro is video and there ars no native apps for the two most popular video sites. The day that the iPad was introduced. The CEO of Netflix was on stage.

shawnc 3y ago
Wasn't the CEO of Disney on stage when the Vision Pro was introduced/announced? From an IP standpoint having Disney on stage over Netflix seems like the better choice...
jwells89 3y ago
I wish so much that YouTube would allow fully featured, non-hacky third party clients again, even if only for paid users (similar to how Spotify used to). The clean platform-convention-respecting straightforwardness of the Apple iOS YouTube app is missed.
ribosometronome 3y ago
Apple directly competes with Netflix, and to some extent Google, considerably more today than they did then.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  And they compete with Disney in streaming. The fact is, Google doesn’t really compete with Apple. The amount of money that Google makes from Android, pales in comparison to what they make from YouTube.

mrcwinn 3y ago

Underspeced? What? Compared to what? This is not even remotely defensible. In its spec it offered a full color multi-touch gesture display —instead of a 132x65 pixel black and white screen. Like Steve Jobs said, products are a series of choices.

snowwrestler 3y ago
The original iPhone had 2G cellular connection which was slow for the time, and especially silly since, as you point out, it was well powered otherwise. The iPhone 3GS caught it up to other smart phones in the market. It also launched without cut and paste available in the UI, which again, was silly given how it was otherwise an impressive mobile computer.
- ghaff 3y ago
  While there were obviously people who bought the iPhone as soon as it became available, it was probably the 3GS when it really took off. That's when I replaced my Treo. (I also think I was starting a new and more secure job by then.)
jandrese 3y ago
It was EDGE and didn't have enough memory to run the browser well, which caused significant slowdowns. Granted, it was still better than literally every other phone browser at the time, but that didn't mean it was a good as it could have been. The iPhone 3G was a significant upgrade.
- simondotau 3y ago
  > but that didn't mean it was a good as it could have been Nothing is, and nothing can be. Not even if you eliminate cost from the equation. Not even if you eliminate manufacturability, or supply chain availability. You're holding the original iPhone to an impossible standard. The iPhone was arguably the best product Apple could have made for that price, to be released on that date. Sure it could have been better and more expensive. It could have been better and further delayed. It could have been better and also worse in some other way.