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"The Apple Watch's relationship to the Moto 360 looks to me less like the iPhone 6's relationship to the Moto X than like the original iPhone's relationship to

"The Apple Watch's relationship to the Moto 360 looks to me less like the iPhone 6's relationship to the Moto X than like the original iPhone's relationship to other high-end smartphones of 2007: obviously a lot of shared DNA, but trying to address the same problem space in a measurably different way." If you ignore the LG Prada.

chipotle_coyote 12y ago
The LG Prada was an impressive piece of hardware and certainly pointed in the same direction, sure, but it was essentially a feature phone -- a smaller, lower-resolution, grayscale display with no Internet capability to speak of. You had to use a virtual phone keyboard for text messaging, even. There was certainly nothing like Safari, for instance, or any of Apple's messaging applications. Actually, I'd say that the best iPhone-before-iPhone was the Danger Hiptop (a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick). Much more data capability than almost anything else, a reasonably good browser, and even an app store. It'd be interesting to see where that evolutionary line would have been in 2014 if it hadn't been killed by iOS and Android. (And by Microsoft buying Danger and mangling it to hell, of course.)
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps. Like the original iPhone, which intended you to use web apps apart from those built in. As you say, others had app stores first. If Android had launched without the ability to install apps then some Apple blogs would still be talking about how it was fundemantally not designed for the current smartphone era and would never be as good as the iPhone, as they currently do based on misinterpretation of whether touchscreens were intended to be supported from the start.
  - asmosoinio 12y ago
    > The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps. I disagree with that definition: For example all cheapest Nokia phones since a long time ago supported (roughly when they got color screens, some even before that) installing J2ME applications. Same for cheap Samsungs and LGs of the same time. And these are definitely not smart phones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3410 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3410 ""Downloadable personal applications via Java technology"" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition

chipotle_coyote 12y ago

The LG Prada was an impressive piece of hardware and certainly pointed in the same direction, sure, but it was essentially a feature phone -- a smaller, lower-resolution, grayscale display with no Internet capability to speak of. You had to use a virtual phone keyboard for text messaging, even. There was certainly nothing like Safari, for instance, or any of Apple's messaging applications. Actually, I'd say that the best iPhone-before-iPhone was the Danger Hiptop (a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick). Much more data capability than almost anything else, a reasonably good browser, and even an app store. It'd be interesting to see where that evolutionary line would have been in 2014 if it hadn't been killed by iOS and Android. (And by Microsoft buying Danger and mangling it to hell, of course.)

ZeroGravitas 12y ago
The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps. Like the original iPhone, which intended you to use web apps apart from those built in. As you say, others had app stores first. If Android had launched without the ability to install apps then some Apple blogs would still be talking about how it was fundemantally not designed for the current smartphone era and would never be as good as the iPhone, as they currently do based on misinterpretation of whether touchscreens were intended to be supported from the start.
- asmosoinio 12y ago
  > The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps. I disagree with that definition: For example all cheapest Nokia phones since a long time ago supported (roughly when they got color screens, some even before that) installing J2ME applications. Same for cheap Samsungs and LGs of the same time. And these are definitely not smart phones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3410 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3410 ""Downloadable personal applications via Java technology"" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition