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"Cingular has allowed Apple to launch a device with WLAN and inbuilt services" Ugh, that "allowed". It's wild how much Apple shook up the mobile phone market

"Cingular has allowed Apple to launch a device with WLAN and inbuilt services" Ugh, that "allowed". It's wild how much Apple shook up the mobile phone market and pushed phone companies back to just being dumb data carriers.

bombcar 2y ago
Jobs sticking to his guns here and breaking the shitware monopoly on pre-installed phones is probably a bigger part of the full story than the phone itself (as likely the black rectangle would be developed by someone eventually, phone carcinization).
- Lammy 2y ago
  > as likely the black rectangle would be developed by someone eventually, phone carcinization Relevant: LG Prada (2006) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
pjc50 2y ago
This was so critical - in the US market. The first Apple phone was a very interesting market test that proved why this was needed, before the iPhone.
indrora 2y ago
Stuff like this goes back YEARS. Back in the days of the Bell System, the upper management at AT&T believed that it was going to be circuit-switched forever, even as Bell Labs was building packet-switched audio networks and it was becoming clear that packet-switching was a vastly more efficient solution to moving large amounts of mixed data around at a time. The development of efficient switching networks [0] was fundamentally resulting in continually building bigger networks that took up more space -- it was the Strowger step-by-step problem all over again. Moving to a packet-switched system meant that you could have an infinite number of "circuits" so long as you kept track of the paths taken. But even as AT&T Long Lines implemented this, upper AT&T management was firm that the fundamental design of the network was not to shuffle packets around but instead to connect point A and point B with services on either end for the subscriber. Even when they did eventually try to accept the packet-switched system, ISDN was too big and bulky, too slow for anything practical, and by the time it was useful, Ethernet/IP came along and ate its lunch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonblocking_minimal_spanning_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonblocking_minimal_spanning_s...
- rasz 2y ago
  Wasnt ISDN still circuit switched?
  - indrora 2y ago
    Kinda-Sorta. Ish. It's a weird hybrid between circuit and not

bombcar 2y ago

Jobs sticking to his guns here and breaking the shitware monopoly on pre-installed phones is probably a bigger part of the full story than the phone itself (as likely the black rectangle would be developed by someone eventually, phone carcinization).

Lammy 2y ago
> as likely the black rectangle would be developed by someone eventually, phone carcinization Relevant: LG Prada (2006) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

pjc50 2y ago

This was so critical - in the US market. The first Apple phone was a very interesting market test that proved why this was needed, before the iPhone.

indrora 2y ago

Stuff like this goes back YEARS. Back in the days of the Bell System, the upper management at AT&T believed that it was going to be circuit-switched forever, even as Bell Labs was building packet-switched audio networks and it was becoming clear that packet-switching was a vastly more efficient solution to moving large amounts of mixed data around at a time. The development of efficient switching networks [0] was fundamentally resulting in continually building bigger networks that took up more space -- it was the Strowger step-by-step problem all over again. Moving to a packet-switched system meant that you could have an infinite number of "circuits" so long as you kept track of the paths taken. But even as AT&T Long Lines implemented this, upper AT&T management was firm that the fundamental design of the network was not to shuffle packets around but instead to connect point A and point B with services on either end for the subscriber. Even when they did eventually try to accept the packet-switched system, ISDN was too big and bulky, too slow for anything practical, and by the time it was useful, Ethernet/IP came along and ate its lunch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonblocking_minimal_spanning_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonblocking_minimal_spanning_s...

rasz 2y ago
Wasnt ISDN still circuit switched?
- indrora 2y ago
  Kinda-Sorta. Ish. It's a weird hybrid between circuit and not