4 ms·
They fast-follow then market so aggressively with just enough proprietary tweaks so they can trademark it that people think that Apple invented the technology.
by xnorswap 6mo ago
They fast-follow then market so aggressively with just enough proprietary tweaks so they can trademark it that people think that Apple invented the technology.
- evilduck 6mo agoPeople end up thinking Apple invented something because they tend to make the first usable version of something that could appeal to the general population.
- gambiting 6mo agoI literally can't think of an example. Care to share one?
- stouset 6mo agoI’ll give you a hint: you may very well have replied on this category of device.
- gambiting 6mo ago...are we going to pretend smartphones didn't exist before iPhone was launched? I think I was on my 3rd one when the iPhone came out and even then it was a luxury toy for the rich, I didn't know anyone who actually had an iPhone for a good few years after they came out. Unless you're implying something else?
- Yajirobe 6mo agoyour symbian nokias with keyboards don't count
- gambiting 6mo ago...because you said so? I'm assuming you will say Palms also don't count? Blackberries neither? Phones running Windows Mobile weren't really smartphones? Let me guess - nothing that wasn't an iPhone counts?
- toraway 6mo agoTrue, I would never argue the iPhone wasn't a transformational step-up in usability that made smartphones a mainstream device category thanks to the App Store and slab screen with multi-touch. But at the same time.... I had been doing nearly everything the iPhone could do in terms of raw functionality (plus plenty of stuff that took 1+ years to land on iPhones) on multiple different Windows Mobile and Palm smartphones pre-iPhone. Saying pre-iPhone smartphones don't count because "ugly nerdphone with gross keyboard" is just as ridiculous as a "iPhone was overhyped and no better than existing smartphones" claim. Apple created a device category within smartphones that then consumed and became what we now think of as a "smartphone" after iPhone and Android together strangled the first movers. Like, the famous Steve Jobs "an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator" line was just listing standard smartphone features by that point. More or less the definition of a smartphone in fact.
- gambiting 6mo agoAgreed. To add to this - saying that iPhones were the first version of smartphones that people actually wanted is silly - there was clearly a huge demand for these kinds of devices by the time iPhone came out.
- stouset 6mo agoNone of these were more than a blip in the market. Nothing today even remotely resembles these devices, inherits design language from them, or points back in any way to them. They are historical dead ends and nearly irrelevant. Meanwhile the majority of people on earth own one or multiple devices that are more or less clones of the original iPhone, only faster, larger, thinner, and exponentially more capable.
- 6mo ago
- stouset 6mo agoThis entire subthread is discussing the statement > People end up thinking Apple invented something because they tend to make the first usable version I think we can all agree that the original iPhone is the conceptual progenitor of virtually every phone that’s mattered in the market since it was released. Smartphones prior to it have essentially zero descendants. For all intents and purposes they effectively did invent the smartphone. Hell “smartphones” as a distinct market all but don’t even exist any more. They’re barely even “phones” at this point. And this entire arc of development points directly back to the original iPhone release.