5 ms·

I would love to know if Ives was truly foundation to the iPhone, or if he was more given the overall idea and polished it with the final look/feel (which is als

by proee 11mo ago

I would love to know if Ives was truly foundation to the iPhone, or if he was more given the overall idea and polished it with the final look/feel (which is also important). Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Perhaps the team just sat around a table and came up with the vision. Or maybe it was Jobs, but clearly there were some good visionaries in the company. I think the proof of Ive's excellence will come out of this next OpenAI project. If it's something lame, then I will assume his impact at Apple was overrated. If it's a jaw-dropper, then maybe he really is the cat's meow.

gmm1990 11mo ago
I think he could have been instrumental to the iphone (not saying he was or wasn't) and whatever he tries next is a complete flop. The ability to be successful is contextual, and great artists can produce mediocre art.
- proee 11mo ago
  Yes, he could be a one-hit-wonder artist.
- mrandish 11mo ago
  > The ability to be successful is contextual Excellent point. I think most great creative work is due to a uniquely 'right' combination of people, problem, experience and environment being together at an opportune moment.
bee_rider 11mo ago
Did iOS actually invent the idea of scrolling with a gesture? I could have sworn it already existed at the time. Like panning over a map on a GPS… The momentum on iOS is nicely tuned though.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago
  I know mouse gestures existed previously because I remember someone on /. talking about them circa 2000 and I had to look up what they were. But I don't remember what they were being used for.
- pavlov 11mo ago
  Adobe Illustator had a Hand tool already in 1987 that let you pan the canvas by dragging the mouse. Probably it’s older than that. But adding the physical feel of momentum and inertia was Apple’s invention, AFAIK.
- UI_at_80x24 11mo ago
  Not necessarily the first, but the earliest that I can remember: Decades ago (before they were sold/bought/sold), Opera (web browser/suite) used gestures as a navigation tool with your mouse. I never could figure out how to get it to work, but it was a thing.
- angiolillo 11mo ago
  Touchscreen scrolling has been in consumer products since at least the early 1980s and inertial scrolling on a touchscreen has been around since at least the early 1990s with Sun's Star7[1]. (And I wouldn't be surprised if there are academic papers that predate the consumer products by a decade or more.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s
  - proee 11mo ago
    That is a seriously sick demo. I had no idea such capability existed back then. Way ahead of its time.
    - ryandrake 11mo ago
      Practically, though, the UX in that demo was terrible. The frame rate was entirely insufficient. The latency between tapping and action taking place was too long. The idea was absolutely great and way ahead of its time, but it was also way ahead of the hardware's capabilities. We saw a lot of great ideas in the 90s, but either the hardware performance wasn't ready, or the software effort fell short of the polish needed for mass adoption. We had to wait for the iPhone to be one of those rare products where they used capable hardware AND actually finished the software.
  - accrual 11mo ago
    I love the delightfully 90's/global village icons they used in the UI here. So few pixels but they still incorporated popular aesthetics from the time.
- ThrowawayB7 11mo ago
  The breakthrough aspect of the iPhone was enabling gestures and a very usable UI without having to use a stylus. This is despite the much lower precision of the capacitive touchscreen tech available in that era. Other smartphones and PDAs back then used more precise resistive touchscreens that required an annoying pressure stylus because it was a way to get more usability out of the very small screens that devices were limited to.
mrandish 11mo ago
> Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation between companies like Nokia, Palm, HP, Sony, Ericsson and Blackberry with platforms like Pocket PC, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile. The iPhone was announced in Jan 2007 at MacWorld (and shipped in July), I was there and played with it extensively in the Apple booth. I remember thinking it had some especially clever ideas and was a very nice implementation. It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary. It was definitely significant but still a (large) step in an ongoing progression of refinement, integration and search for product/market fit. There were already large color touchscreen devices which integrated a phone, messaging, camera, music player, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Here's an article looking at a few pre-iPhone devices: https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-years-ago-2016-edition_id77679 https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-.... The iPhone 1's design was uniquely simple and svelte but I was immediately concerned about it having enough battery to support that screen. The choice to go with just "One Big Button" and no physical keyboard or navigation keys was bold, weird and also a bit concerning. The on-screen keyboard-only and gesture nav-only choices did feel a bit like two steps forward, one back in iOS 1. It felt like they made a 'purist' design decision and had to make it work as well as it could. That worked out to be "well enough" but sometimes similarly bold but risky choices can fail when they sacrifice too much. However, the battery life did become a very serious issue for active users when the first iPhone shipped and limited the success of the device. It's also worth remembering the usability of iOS 1 was pretty clunky. I played with most of these early phone devices and owned several but didn't adopt an iPhone as my primary device until the iPhone 3G shipped 18 months after the iPhone launch. The 3G was significantly better, different and more refined than the iPhone 1.
- altcognito 11mo ago
  The iPhone was the first really well done general purpose computing phone. It had a real web browser, a real music player, apps that didn't suck. Adoption was huge because the design was great, but we would have just seen the same thing transpire over a number of years if iPhone hadn't been created. I know a lot of people basically who were basically saying "finally"
jimbokun 11mo ago
Jobs and Ive were at the core of all the product design. There were multiple articles about Jobs spending most of his day with Jony looking at prototypes Jony's team had devised and giving critiques and feedback. Then they would iterate on what Jobs said. Of course the engineering team had to figure out how to make Jobs suggestions real within the physical and technological constraints they were working with. > I think the proof of Ive's excellence will come out of this next OpenAI project. I think Ive's lack of high profile success since Jobs passed away shows Jobs true talent. He was a taste savant. A genius for figuring out what people would like and building a team capable of building those things at scale. Ive could take Jobs ideas and come up with a concrete design for making them real. But he doesn't have that instinct for figuring out what kinds of products people want in the first place. I would love to know what Jobs would have done with AI to make it into something people want to use, instead of being terrified it's just going to put them out of work.
- ElijahLynn 11mo ago
  Maybe Altman will serve that taste savant role, and they will be a good combo. I'm optimistic they will produce something that: * doesn't have ads, (we are the customer, not the product) * makes our lives more fluid and easy * delivers on the vision for what computers always could be Jarvis, please make me a sandwich.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    I don't see the reason for optimism.
  - simulator5g 11mo ago
    Its too late for that, they're already working on putting ads in ChatGPT. https://www.seo.com/blog/chatgpt-advertising/ https://www.seo.com/blog/chatgpt-advertising/ This won't only be in the free tier. Altman says they don't even break even on the paid tiers. They will use whatever money is available to fill that gap, and advertising money is available. https://x.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813 https://x.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813 Soon we will live in a world where people don't make purchasing decisions for themselves, they ask an AI which will suggest the product that pays the most for ads. Payola World.
tagyro 11mo ago
Back in 2006 I saw this demo video from Jeff Han https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY so when the iPhone came out I really wasn't surprised by the multi-touch part. And, as others have pointed out, scroll inertia wasn't a new concept - I also remember a Flash website (or demo) from yugop (Yugo Nakamura) or Tokyo Flash (I really don't remember whom) that had it in the interface, all very fluid. Was the iPhone revolutionary? Absolutely! But, imho, it was built on evolutionary advancements.

by proee 11mo ago

gmm1990 11mo ago

I think he could have been instrumental to the iphone (not saying he was or wasn't) and whatever he tries next is a complete flop. The ability to be successful is contextual, and great artists can produce mediocre art.

proee 11mo ago
Yes, he could be a one-hit-wonder artist.
mrandish 11mo ago
> The ability to be successful is contextual Excellent point. I think most great creative work is due to a uniquely 'right' combination of people, problem, experience and environment being together at an opportune moment.

bee_rider 11mo ago

Did iOS actually invent the idea of scrolling with a gesture? I could have sworn it already existed at the time. Like panning over a map on a GPS… The momentum on iOS is nicely tuned though.

HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago
I know mouse gestures existed previously because I remember someone on /. talking about them circa 2000 and I had to look up what they were. But I don't remember what they were being used for.
pavlov 11mo ago
Adobe Illustator had a Hand tool already in 1987 that let you pan the canvas by dragging the mouse. Probably it’s older than that. But adding the physical feel of momentum and inertia was Apple’s invention, AFAIK.
UI_at_80x24 11mo ago
Not necessarily the first, but the earliest that I can remember: Decades ago (before they were sold/bought/sold), Opera (web browser/suite) used gestures as a navigation tool with your mouse. I never could figure out how to get it to work, but it was a thing.
angiolillo 11mo ago
Touchscreen scrolling has been in consumer products since at least the early 1980s and inertial scrolling on a touchscreen has been around since at least the early 1990s with Sun's Star7[1]. (And I wouldn't be surprised if there are academic papers that predate the consumer products by a decade or more.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s
- proee 11mo ago
  That is a seriously sick demo. I had no idea such capability existed back then. Way ahead of its time.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    Practically, though, the UX in that demo was terrible. The frame rate was entirely insufficient. The latency between tapping and action taking place was too long. The idea was absolutely great and way ahead of its time, but it was also way ahead of the hardware's capabilities. We saw a lot of great ideas in the 90s, but either the hardware performance wasn't ready, or the software effort fell short of the polish needed for mass adoption. We had to wait for the iPhone to be one of those rare products where they used capable hardware AND actually finished the software.
- accrual 11mo ago
  I love the delightfully 90's/global village icons they used in the UI here. So few pixels but they still incorporated popular aesthetics from the time.
ThrowawayB7 11mo ago
The breakthrough aspect of the iPhone was enabling gestures and a very usable UI without having to use a stylus. This is despite the much lower precision of the capacitive touchscreen tech available in that era. Other smartphones and PDAs back then used more precise resistive touchscreens that required an annoying pressure stylus because it was a way to get more usability out of the very small screens that devices were limited to.

mrandish 11mo ago

> Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation between companies like Nokia, Palm, HP, Sony, Ericsson and Blackberry with platforms like Pocket PC, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile. The iPhone was announced in Jan 2007 at MacWorld (and shipped in July), I was there and played with it extensively in the Apple booth. I remember thinking it had some especially clever ideas and was a very nice implementation. It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary. It was definitely significant but still a (large) step in an ongoing progression of refinement, integration and search for product/market fit. There were already large color touchscreen devices which integrated a phone, messaging, camera, music player, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Here's an article looking at a few pre-iPhone devices: https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-years-ago-2016-edition_id77679 https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-.... The iPhone 1's design was uniquely simple and svelte but I was immediately concerned about it having enough battery to support that screen. The choice to go with just "One Big Button" and no physical keyboard or navigation keys was bold, weird and also a bit concerning. The on-screen keyboard-only and gesture nav-only choices did feel a bit like two steps forward, one back in iOS 1. It felt like they made a 'purist' design decision and had to make it work as well as it could. That worked out to be "well enough" but sometimes similarly bold but risky choices can fail when they sacrifice too much. However, the battery life did become a very serious issue for active users when the first iPhone shipped and limited the success of the device. It's also worth remembering the usability of iOS 1 was pretty clunky. I played with most of these early phone devices and owned several but didn't adopt an iPhone as my primary device until the iPhone 3G shipped 18 months after the iPhone launch. The 3G was significantly better, different and more refined than the iPhone 1.

altcognito 11mo ago
The iPhone was the first really well done general purpose computing phone. It had a real web browser, a real music player, apps that didn't suck. Adoption was huge because the design was great, but we would have just seen the same thing transpire over a number of years if iPhone hadn't been created. I know a lot of people basically who were basically saying "finally"

jimbokun 11mo ago

Jobs and Ive were at the core of all the product design. There were multiple articles about Jobs spending most of his day with Jony looking at prototypes Jony's team had devised and giving critiques and feedback. Then they would iterate on what Jobs said. Of course the engineering team had to figure out how to make Jobs suggestions real within the physical and technological constraints they were working with. > I think the proof of Ive's excellence will come out of this next OpenAI project. I think Ive's lack of high profile success since Jobs passed away shows Jobs true talent. He was a taste savant. A genius for figuring out what people would like and building a team capable of building those things at scale. Ive could take Jobs ideas and come up with a concrete design for making them real. But he doesn't have that instinct for figuring out what kinds of products people want in the first place. I would love to know what Jobs would have done with AI to make it into something people want to use, instead of being terrified it's just going to put them out of work.

ElijahLynn 11mo ago
Maybe Altman will serve that taste savant role, and they will be a good combo. I'm optimistic they will produce something that: * doesn't have ads, (we are the customer, not the product) * makes our lives more fluid and easy * delivers on the vision for what computers always could be Jarvis, please make me a sandwich.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  I don't see the reason for optimism.
- simulator5g 11mo ago
  Its too late for that, they're already working on putting ads in ChatGPT. https://www.seo.com/blog/chatgpt-advertising/ https://www.seo.com/blog/chatgpt-advertising/ This won't only be in the free tier. Altman says they don't even break even on the paid tiers. They will use whatever money is available to fill that gap, and advertising money is available. https://x.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813 https://x.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813 Soon we will live in a world where people don't make purchasing decisions for themselves, they ask an AI which will suggest the product that pays the most for ads. Payola World.

tagyro 11mo ago

Back in 2006 I saw this demo video from Jeff Han https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY so when the iPhone came out I really wasn't surprised by the multi-touch part. And, as others have pointed out, scroll inertia wasn't a new concept - I also remember a Flash website (or demo) from yugop (Yugo Nakamura) or Tokyo Flash (I really don't remember whom) that had it in the interface, all very fluid. Was the iPhone revolutionary? Absolutely! But, imho, it was built on evolutionary advancements.