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Being usable was largely about timing, though. None of the choices that compromised our device - or those of most of our competitors - were choices we made bec
by vidarh 3y ago
Being usable was largely about timing, though.
None of the choices that compromised our device - or those of most of our competitors - were choices we made because we thought they were right, or best, but because we were forced to by timing and what was available at what cost, and failed to realize that the result was too compromised to stand a chance.
Put another way: Had Apple launched an iPad in 2000, it would've had exactly the same hardware usability issues. There were no good, cheap enough touch screens, or displays, or cheap enough RAM, or cheap enough flash, to deliver what they did later at that time at any price, much less affordable enough.
Timing it when the available components were good enough and cheap enough was how they got it usable and affordable.
Trying too early and drawing the wrong conclusions was also why a lot of their competitors had moved onto a very different track in terms of design.
If you e.g. look at Palm devices that started to get network connectivity etc., from ~2000, you'll see the grid of (user-installable) apps w/touch and no keyboard, and Blackberry-like devices w/keyboard "won" for a while because people took users rejection of crappy, limited resistive touch as a rejection of touch. (I walked around with a Palm device for several years from '98 or so, and couldn't understand why "normal people" rejected them - it felt like scifi)
[EDIT: UMPC was from 2006; and not the type of devices I'm talking about - they're a couple of generations of hardware later; the UMPC if anything were part of that bastardization of the earlier touch focused devices as manufacturers declared the "cleaner" devices dead and buried in the market place without understanding why]
- Nevermark 3y ago> Being usable was largely about timing, though. Most breakthrough inventions, in areas where people fumbled for years or decades, could have been released long before with earlier insight. Maybe not as advanced, but if the right things were done right they still would have been a win. Many of those "right things" were more practicality, psychological, or fit for market, not just waiting around to jump the moment the "right" tech component arrived. Breakthrough products also tend to take competitors by surprise. If the breakthrough product didn't happen, it could be years before any other team comes together with the same focus and insights. So timing a little bit. The vision is important, but often was a common dream. The real rare resources are a very clear vision, stable highly supportive management, a densely talented team, and an intensely iterative focus, and a willingness to go deep and get previously unavailable specialized components made. Somehow "timing" always follows those last resources.
- vidarh 3y agoYou really underestimate timing here, and I feel overestimate how great the first iPhone and iPad was. They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new. The only previously unavailable component they got made was better glass, which was great, but not where the deal breaker was for previous iterations. I find it funny when people want to declare Apple as visionary geniuses over the tech, when the path from earlier devices to the iPhone and iPad was so clear, and given what I know about design discussions etc. in that space. There would have been multiple devices very similar to the iPad had the components existed. The vision was there, the supportive management was there, the talent was there because frankly none of it is complicated, and people iterated for years. None of that means anything when the components just do not exist yet.
- nottorp 3y ago> They didn't take technical genius. All the elements preceded them. Most of the design preceded thrm. They didn't engineer anything particularly new. Actually the one genius move was doing an 100% touch-with-thumb interface. They gave up on revenue for replacement styluses though :)
- vidarh 3y agoI worked on devices that didn't need styluses 6 years before the iPhone. They were not unusual at all. What kept people using styluses was that resistive touch is shit and imprecise, and on small screens they were awful to use. So this boils down to capacitative touch of sufficient quality having gotten cheap enough.
- nottorp 3y agoDid they offer finger scrolling? PalmOS basically didn't, just because the scroll bars were too thin.
- 3y ago
- cultofmetatron 3y ago> Had Apple launched an iPad in 2000, it would've had exactly the same hardware usability issues and thats what excites me the most about the vision pro. when Apple steps in, its generally a signal that the tech has achieved a certain critial mass. vision pro is going to incentivise a lot of hardware manufacturers to start building components for the VR market and increase the ecoomies of scale for other vr systems. Put another way, android wouldn't exist or be relevant if iphone didnt show us what a smart phone could be. now I can go to any store and buy a cheap andrpid for $200. is it as good as a modern flagship iphone? of course not. but it holds up well against any 4 year old iphone.