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Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he was an unparalleled salesman because he was seemingly capable of forereading what people really wanted. Nobody said t

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he was an unparalleled salesman because he was seemingly capable of forereading what people really wanted. Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before, but when Jobs sold it to the people they went completely bonkers lining up for the goods.

BoiledCabbage 2y ago
Agreed, but the thing they wanted was flashy cool design more than features. Ultimately it was more about hype and being trendy is what he sold - with solid UX being number 2. There were mp3 players, tablets and phones prior to Apple. The main innovation they really provided out kf the gate out of all of those 3 was a touch screen input for the phone. The rest were just incremental improvement / polish on existing product design. Not that that isn't important (as the sales showed), but we should be clear about what was truly new to market and what was just cleaned up.
- Lio 2y ago
  It wasn’t just a touch screen though. Ericsson had touch screen phones for many years but they where a single touch, stylus driven UI that was clunky. I had Nokia phones with web browsing, media and a camera but it was WAP not full web and the UI was so bad. Listening to media required proprietary headphones and data was extremely expensive. Jobs changed all of that in one product without adding bloatware.
gary_0 2y ago
> Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before What do you mean? There were MP3 players before the iPod, Blackberries and PDAs before the iPhone, and tablet computers and lightweight laptops before Apple popularized them, and people did expect the somewhat clunky early versions of these technologies to improve. For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas. Jobs should get credit for the leap in quality, functionality, and mass appeal his products represented, but lately I've noticed the history is getting exaggerated to the point where we were all using rotary phones and beige boxes like cavemen before Steve Jobs singlehandedly invented the laptop, tablet, and smartphone. But the truth is far more nuanced than that.
- syndicatedjelly 2y ago
  Did those Mac vs PC commercials also personally offend you?
- mcny 2y ago
  > For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas. In my opinion, the biggest innovation by Apple with the iPhone was that the touch screen is glass and works with skin instead of with the finger nail / stylus. I understand apple didn't invent this but it made multi touch capacitive touchscreen popular.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    While it didn't come out with enough of a gap to suggest Apple was directly copying it, the first capacitative smartphone on the market was the LG Prada.
  - gary_0 2y ago
    I remember vividly how unfun resistive touchscreens were. Especially on tablet computers, which existed long before the iPad, but never caught on. They also had terrible battery life, ugly TFT screens and backlights, unreliable wireless connectivity, laggy UI (Apple seems to be the only company that cared about a consistent 60Hz response), and I think a lot of them ran Windows CE? I'm not sure about that last one, I don't remember, but I'm sure the software sucked. (I'm excluding the Palm-Pilot-ish devices with low-powered CPUs and monochrome LCDs here; those started popping up in the 80's, and of course there was the failed Apple Newton. The devices I'm talking about were basically x86 laptops without keyboards.)
  - whatevertrevor 2y ago
    Was the first iPhone touchscreen even capacitive? I remember using android phones circa 2009 that had resistive touchscreens, it took a bit for capacitive screens to become the norm.

BoiledCabbage 2y ago

Agreed, but the thing they wanted was flashy cool design more than features. Ultimately it was more about hype and being trendy is what he sold - with solid UX being number 2. There were mp3 players, tablets and phones prior to Apple. The main innovation they really provided out kf the gate out of all of those 3 was a touch screen input for the phone. The rest were just incremental improvement / polish on existing product design. Not that that isn't important (as the sales showed), but we should be clear about what was truly new to market and what was just cleaned up.

Lio 2y ago
It wasn’t just a touch screen though. Ericsson had touch screen phones for many years but they where a single touch, stylus driven UI that was clunky. I had Nokia phones with web browsing, media and a camera but it was WAP not full web and the UI was so bad. Listening to media required proprietary headphones and data was extremely expensive. Jobs changed all of that in one product without adding bloatware.

gary_0 2y ago

> Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before What do you mean? There were MP3 players before the iPod, Blackberries and PDAs before the iPhone, and tablet computers and lightweight laptops before Apple popularized them, and people did expect the somewhat clunky early versions of these technologies to improve. For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas. Jobs should get credit for the leap in quality, functionality, and mass appeal his products represented, but lately I've noticed the history is getting exaggerated to the point where we were all using rotary phones and beige boxes like cavemen before Steve Jobs singlehandedly invented the laptop, tablet, and smartphone. But the truth is far more nuanced than that.

syndicatedjelly 2y ago
Did those Mac vs PC commercials also personally offend you?
mcny 2y ago
> For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas. In my opinion, the biggest innovation by Apple with the iPhone was that the touch screen is glass and works with skin instead of with the finger nail / stylus. I understand apple didn't invent this but it made multi touch capacitive touchscreen popular.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  While it didn't come out with enough of a gap to suggest Apple was directly copying it, the first capacitative smartphone on the market was the LG Prada.
- gary_0 2y ago
  I remember vividly how unfun resistive touchscreens were. Especially on tablet computers, which existed long before the iPad, but never caught on. They also had terrible battery life, ugly TFT screens and backlights, unreliable wireless connectivity, laggy UI (Apple seems to be the only company that cared about a consistent 60Hz response), and I think a lot of them ran Windows CE? I'm not sure about that last one, I don't remember, but I'm sure the software sucked. (I'm excluding the Palm-Pilot-ish devices with low-powered CPUs and monochrome LCDs here; those started popping up in the 80's, and of course there was the failed Apple Newton. The devices I'm talking about were basically x86 laptops without keyboards.)
- whatevertrevor 2y ago
  Was the first iPhone touchscreen even capacitive? I remember using android phones circa 2009 that had resistive touchscreens, it took a bit for capacitive screens to become the norm.