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The iPhone Turns 10 (economist.com)
"Every once in awhile a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," said co-founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as he kickstarted the iPhone keynote. Ten years ago, thousands of people around the world listened to him in a mock turtleneck talk about a phone. They liked it so much that they decided to wait outside Apple stores for hours on end to buy one. Little did anyone know the phone -- called the iPhone -- would go on to revolutionize, in the truest sense of the word, the smartphone industry as we know it.
From an Economist article: No product in recent history has changed people's lives more. Without the iPhone, ride-hailing, photo-sharing, instant messaging and other essentials of modern life would be less widespread. Shorn of cumulative sales of 1.2bn devices and revenues of $1trn, Apple would not hold the crown of the world's largest listed company. Thousands of software developers would be poorer, too: the apps they have written for the smartphone make them more than $20bn annually. Here's how some journalists saw the original iPhone. David Pogue, writing for the New York Times: But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles. Walt Mossberg, writing for the Wall Street Journal: Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can't possibly meet them all. It isn't for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting. But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use. John Gruber's first impressions of the iPhone: The iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I'm just blown away by how nice it is -- very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun. Jason Snell, writing for Macworld: To put it more simply: The iPhone is the real deal. It's a product that has already changed the way people look at the devices they carry in their pockets and purses. After only a few days with mine, the prospect of carrying a cellphone with me wherever I go no longer fills me with begrudging acceptance, but actual excitement. Recode has some charts that show how the iPhone has grown over the years. Here's the primer: 1. The iPhone put the internet in everyone's pocket.
2. The iPhone transformed photography from a hobby to a part of everyday life.
3. The iPhone App Store changed the way software was created and distributed.
4. iPhone apps changed everything, even how people work.
5. The iPhone made Apple the world's most valuable company. Apple commentator Horace Dediu writing for Asymco: The iPhone is the best selling product ever, making Apple perhaps the best business ever. Because of the iPhone, Apple has managed to survive to a relatively old age. Not only did it build a device base well over 1 billion it engendered loyalty and satisfaction described only by superlatives. To summarize I can offer two numbers:
1. 1,162,796,000 iPhones sold (to end of March 2017).
2. $742,912,000,000 in revenues. $1 trillion will be reached in less than 18 months. In closing, security researcher Mikko Hypponen tweeted, "iPhone is 10 years old today. After 10 years, not a single serious malware case. It's not just luck; we need to congratulate Apple on this."
From an Economist article: No product in recent history has changed people's lives more. Without the iPhone, ride-hailing, photo-sharing, instant messaging and other essentials of modern life would be less widespread. Shorn of cumulative sales of 1.2bn devices and revenues of $1trn, Apple would not hold the crown of the world's largest listed company. Thousands of software developers would be poorer, too: the apps they have written for the smartphone make them more than $20bn annually. Here's how some journalists saw the original iPhone. David Pogue, writing for the New York Times: But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles. Walt Mossberg, writing for the Wall Street Journal: Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can't possibly meet them all. It isn't for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting. But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use. John Gruber's first impressions of the iPhone: The iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I'm just blown away by how nice it is -- very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun. Jason Snell, writing for Macworld: To put it more simply: The iPhone is the real deal. It's a product that has already changed the way people look at the devices they carry in their pockets and purses. After only a few days with mine, the prospect of carrying a cellphone with me wherever I go no longer fills me with begrudging acceptance, but actual excitement. Recode has some charts that show how the iPhone has grown over the years. Here's the primer: 1. The iPhone put the internet in everyone's pocket.
2. The iPhone transformed photography from a hobby to a part of everyday life.
3. The iPhone App Store changed the way software was created and distributed.
4. iPhone apps changed everything, even how people work.
5. The iPhone made Apple the world's most valuable company. Apple commentator Horace Dediu writing for Asymco: The iPhone is the best selling product ever, making Apple perhaps the best business ever. Because of the iPhone, Apple has managed to survive to a relatively old age. Not only did it build a device base well over 1 billion it engendered loyalty and satisfaction described only by superlatives. To summarize I can offer two numbers:
1. 1,162,796,000 iPhones sold (to end of March 2017).
2. $742,912,000,000 in revenues. $1 trillion will be reached in less than 18 months. In closing, security researcher Mikko Hypponen tweeted, "iPhone is 10 years old today. After 10 years, not a single serious malware case. It's not just luck; we need to congratulate Apple on this."
Que all the Applephiles & Apple Bashers
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
1.1 billion is an admirable number of phones to sell, no doubt about it. But how many users are represented by those 1.1 billion phones? It seems that few iPhone users buy just one and are happy about it; their model seems based in no small part on people buying a new iPhone (at least) every two-three years. The used market seems to have nearly evaporated for them due to the hysteria surrounding the new models, so it is generally fair to expect each phone to have only one owner before going to disposal.
Does anyone have a metric on how many unique iPhone users are out there?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did Apple accelerate it?
Yes.
But don't try to sell me the Apple invented the smartphone bs.
An great leap forward in marketing and in improving the efficiency of the surveillance state. It turns out spying is cheaper and easier if you let the private sector do it for you.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think you're confusing Apple with Facebook. Apple's devices are just a conduit, while the actual surveillance data is all going through and being stored in Facebook. Blaming Apple for this would be like blaming BP gas for motor vehicle accidents; sure if it wasn't there at all it would be slightly more difficult but there were other more pressing factors.
And certainly, someone else would have combined all this into one device eventually regardless of whether or not Apple was the first to do it in a commercially successful way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm not sure what you mean by surveillance state.
Apples security record has been very impressive. The latest iPhones are probably the most secure mass produced device ever. They are made so even apple can't get the data, and neither can governments.
I took the train up to San Francisco to see the iPhone under the domed glass after Steve Jobs gave his keynote address at the MacWorld Expo 2007. I wouldn't get an iPhone for another seven years as the Great Recession came and went, picking up an iPhone 5C and later an iPhone 6s. Thinking about upgrading to the Red iPhone 7 in the near future.
Happy owner of four iPhones myself over the past decade.
*shudders at the thought of that android I tried for a short bit*
Lots of companies could have invented the iPhone, but no one did. Neopoint definitely wasn't on that path, nor was black berry or Nokia. Apple deserves credit for creating the interface that changed mobile computing.
Why is this taking up the entire front page? What happened to "Read more...?"
- Make a complex pocket-sized super-computer usable for normal people
- Put a proper webbrowser into a pocket sized device
- implement the concept of an online marketplace for software (henceforth called "Apps" - short and poignant so everyone can use the word)
- kill Flash and trailblaze it's replacement by an open standard web
My first all-touch device after my Blackberry was the HTC Desire.
And while it was way better than the iPhone at the time in every aspect, you still have to hand it to Apple: They started an entirely new industry.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Smartphones and their apps track and trace peoples purchases, movements, social groups, etc. Apple itself is but a small portion of it but they created a surveillance ecosystem.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I used an iPhone 4S until about a year ago. I bought it off lease at the tail end of it's production. I then upgraded to an iPhone 5 which I'm using now with the latest iOS.
Not sure what you mean by old models are "obsolete" The Asus Android tablet I bought a year ago is still stuck on 5.1 with no signs that they will offer an update to 6, much less 7.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
what might have been created if the iPhone never came out. Their usage model was very good, and became dominant. What might have been instead if it never came to be? Maybe someone would have come up with a holographic display like star wars had? Or some other compeltely different concept? Might have been better, might have been worse. Think silicon/GaAs. Because silicon was so dominant and so much money was thrown at it, GaAs never got a chance.
Apple does not like to be reminded but the original iPhone was made by Motorola and it was called the ROKR.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
But, the problem is, will Apple continue to dominate? Have smartphones really "progressed" since the first one? Not really. They've gotten bigger, faster, brighter. It's still a rectangular slab of glass, metal plastic. Yeah, the form follows the function, but what about folding screens, 3D graphics, or some sort of "earth shattering" change? Apple, might be on it's way to say Xerox, IBM, The "big 3 automakers" if they aren't careful. Rest on your accomplishments, without continuing to innovate, and someone will pass you by.
Wow... the first phone. First smart-phone. The first phone with WiFi and the first phone with an RGB display.
Can't believe it's only been 10 years!
Here's to another 10 years of firsts!
Smartphones and their apps track and trace peoples purchases, movements, social groups, etc. Apple itself is but a small portion of it but they created a surveillance ecosystem.
really, so my phone can tell when I pull cash out of my pocket to buy something?
really, so my phone tracks the identities of the people I encounter on the street?
And wither on the vine hatheth one, whileth roteth in the ground hatheth the other.
which we could have had 20+ years ago.. cease fire stand down.. unblock your routers.. sing along.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtzoUu7w-YM
Smartphones and their apps track and trace peoples purchases, movements, social groups, etc. Apple itself is but a small portion of it but they created a surveillance ecosystem.
Google (Hint: the maker of Android) reads your mail, tracks your browser history, your shopping habits and your movements among other things. I'm pretty sure Apple is an amateur convention compared to Google when it comes to monitoring every single thing their customers do.
i dunno. there would have been 'smartphones' with or without apple's involvement.
the vcr and microwave are relatively modern inventions that i say 'changed peoples lives' far more than a simple iphone. going back farther.. transistor? definitely. internal combustion engine. definitely changed lives. nuclear reactors. changed lives. mri machines? changed lives. iphones? nope. sorry.
Really? The iPhone?
Never had one, never will.
Yet, I am doing all the things that the iPhone does, but w/ an Android.
PDAs, including all the "firsts" attributed to the iPhone in this article, predate Apple's smartphone, sometime by a whole decade.
Even *Apple's own Newton* predates the iPhone.
My first tough when I saw the iPhone back then was : Oh, yeah. Now Apple wants to jump on the "PDA" bandwagon, as if Microsoft wasn't enough already.
The form factor (screen and touch interface) was already standard since the first Palm rose to success.
(Apple's minor improvement was to be among the first with multi-touch, thank to their "capacitive touch interface" port-folio, licensed from Synaptics and used on iPod touch-wheels)
The Palm Tungsten I had in my pocket that day already had this form factor and was already old by that time.
Network access ? Has always been the staple of PDAs. Starting from the venerable Psion (using compact-flash modules), through Palm both for wifi
(Wifi SDIO modules, then later built-in) and for cell (IrDA tethering, Bluetooth Tethering, cell modules on Visor, and finally built-in cell capability with Palm Centro and such).
By the time the iPhone was announced, every single PDA (either running PalmOS or WinCE) could go online, either wifi or cell.
The only thing that Apple brought is marketing the same old concept but to masses. Before, PDA tended to be market more toward business, academics and doctors. Random people tended to have durable dump phones (Nokia) or feature phone (exemple like RAZR).
Apple's iPhone is the first that was marketed toward Joe Six-pack. (Tough before, other companies like Tapwave tried unsuccessfully to enter other market like the PDA/hanheld console hybrid Zodiac geared toward college students).
That, and managing to completely ruin the idea of battery endurance (iPhone 1 couldn't even get through the day on a single charge. Dumb phone could go between a week and a month depending on which (user-replaceable) battery was used. Most PDA could hold about a couple of days).
Apps ? PalmOS almost single-handedly invented the concept of apps.
Apple's only "invention" (actually drawback) was to leverage their iTunes platform to impose 1 single walled garden with no way to get apps from anywhere else.
And actually, You might not be remembering, but 3rd-party apps only arrived much later on. Initially Apple opinion was : either only our own apps, or 3rd mobile websites, no other choice.
Photography is the only actual field where Apple really helped things move forward.
Before, it was either crappy webcam on feature phone with minimalist possibilities (save them on the bult-in memory, send them by MMS/eMail/Bluetooth/IrDA),
or *very few* PDAs (as most PDAs where marketed toward business use, very few had built-in camera. Sony Clie was among the exceptions. A few add-ons did exist but with very limited real-world use).
As Apples' smartphone was more geared toward the general public, it made sense to equip it with some photo capabilities.
Of course that being Apple, they couldn't introduce it without yet another major step back : No. Fucking. External. Storage.
Whereas most of the industry was standardizing on SD cards for PDAs (some even featuring dual slots) - (With Sony's memory stick being the only usual exception), iPhone didn't have any slot or extension ports.
Oh and another step back : Bluetooth only used for wireless audio. No way to use bluetooth to send the photos. Basically, Apple tried to put a cam that didn't suck too much on the iPhone, but then locked in all the pictures.
So over all, Apple just re-heated an already existing concept PDA, managed to market it to wider masses (so iPhone is basically to PDAs and smartphone, what Wii is to home consoles), while still fucking up quite a few point (but never mind, the masses weren't using PDAs before and won't notice the missing stuff) and make people thing they actually started the whole concept.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Android phones outsell iPhones 2 to 1. That's a very nice business that Apple created for Google. Google should thank them.
PDAs were already doing this for quite some time.
Make a complex pocket-sized super-computer usable for normal people
done by PDAs for decade by this point. They weren't designed for highly technical people neither.
The only details is that PDAs were usually marketed toward business, students, doctors, etc.
Apple marketed their to Joe Random.
Put a proper webbrowser into a pocket sized device
...ever heard of Opera Mini ?
Though yes theirs was a bit better than what was available elsewhere.
implement the concept of an online marketplace for software (henceforth called "Apps" - short and poignant so everyone can use the word)
Wut ?
The well developped PalmOS apps ecosystem that existed before begs to differ.
Apple's actual only success is managing to lock the users into a *single* walled garden. (Whereas there were various website where you could fetch PDA applications, none of which usually operated by the constructor).
Also, most people seem to forget, but when the iPhone was released, there wasn't much possibilities for 3rd party apps.
3rd parties were supposed to make mobile websites.
3rd party apps were only allowed at a later point in the device life cycle.
kill Flash and trailblaze it's replacement by an open standard web
My first all-touch device after my Blackberry was the HTC Desire.
And while it was way better than the iPhone at the time in every aspect, you still have to hand it to Apple: They started an entirely new industry.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Most namely the Pocket PC and Windows CE, before the iPhone Windows Mobile and Pocket PC "apps" were sold by the millions through PocketGear and Handango, which were third party app stores that existed for many years.
And before that PalmOS had a tremedous success.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Enough of the Apple revisionist history.
1. The iPhone put a tracking device in everyone's pocket.
2. The iPhone transformed self-absorbed narcissism from a hobby to a part of everyday life.
3. The iPhone App Store made applications gay, bloated, and centered around ADHD Millennial Faggotshit.
4. iPhone apps ruined everything, even how people think
5. The iPhone made People the world's least enjoyable company, especially when they have one in their
stupid, frantic, FOMO-induced idiot hands.
I'm genuinely curious if Apple has ever been "first" with any technology or feature? I've never seen it personally.
Why does it matter to anyone but you? What is the point you are trying to prove?
When the robot masters surgically implant hypnotic vibrators or pleasure-caps in every infant, these sycophantic journalists will say the same thing: revolutionary!
Stallman had it right: the iPhone's chief contribution was making the walled-garden signed-app jail "cool." Everything they have done next has built on that: wizard-like interfaces that users "experience" instead of using, single-user-computer DRM-based "ecosystems" that trade user data, mandatory "cloud APIs" instead of net neutrality to access certain functions like notifications.
An great leap forward in marketing and in improving the efficiency of the surveillance state. It turns out spying is cheaper and easier if you let the private sector do it for you.
Mods? Dear GOD! How is the Parent "Insightful"???
More like "INsightful", as in TROLLISH!
> 1. The iPhone put the internet in everyone's pocket.
....
Bullshit. It put the internet in the pocket of people who bought iPhones. It was already in the pocket of Palm Treo (from 2003), Nokia Symbian phones (from 2002), Blackberry (I can't be bothered to figure out the date)
The internet was on even earlier phones if you count WAP -- which you should, it was real and it was Internet.
The iPhone was a real improvement over other smartphones. It didn't invent the fucking smartphone.
I'm not sure what you mean by surveillance state.
Apples security record has been very impressive. The latest iPhones are probably the most secure mass produced device ever. They are made so even apple can't get the data, and neither can governments.
This. This. A BEELION times, This...
Smartphones and their apps track and trace peoples purchases, movements, social groups, etc. Apple itself is but a small portion of it but they created a surveillance ecosystem.
Oh, and what would that be?
If you are referring to iAds, that ENDED. And nothing else fits your meme.
Smartphones and their apps track and trace peoples purchases, movements, social groups, etc. Apple itself is but a small portion of it but they created a surveillance ecosystem.
Google (Hint: the maker of Android) reads your mail, tracks your browser history, your shopping habits and your movements among other things. I'm pretty sure Apple is an amateur convention compared to Google when it comes to monitoring every single thing their customers do.
Actually, Apple has, and continues to, take great steps to NOT track you.
Even when they want anonymized statistical data, they have instituted cutting-edge techniques to separate the data from the user's, or device's, IDs. Here's some examples:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/...
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.c...
... for forbidding crappy carrier bloatware.
The World created by Apple is a bad one... So called modern smartphones are junk... Android and iOS alike... Facebook should have never happended....
For example look at what we lost with the phones made by Nokia and BlackBerry .... N900 anyone?
- Turned people into zombies who simply cannot control themselves and their usage. Parents at the park completely neglecting their kids and therefor their development. People everywhere being out to lunch and not aware of their surroundings.
- Made driving way more dangerous (some would say more dangerous than alcohol)
- Made it acceptable for you to be checking your work email at home and therefor working all the time. A sort of manic-ness has set in about communications, and the appropriate duration it should take to connect with someone. (im sure we all know people who send multiple emails an hour when you dont respond, each getting more and more frantic)
- All the tracking and marketing integration which is now considered normal by a large part of the populace.
- Normalized paying for small software applications and tools. Normalized having centralized walled garden managed application "stores" which acceptable and non acceptable content being dictated by for profit corporations.
- Put more screens infront of kids, especially babies and other impressionable youths. And people now think this is acceptable, whereas with television people generally had a negative view of letting their kids be raised by it.
- People tuning out of the real world and into the virtual one more and more, and reinforcing the echo chambers of their own beliefs.
- Websites being ruined to cater to the more monetizable smart phone user who is not anonymous and therefor more valuable to marketers (witness what happened to google news yesterday, RIP)
- Passive tracking and listening devices pretty much on everyone, all the time.
- The waste generated on a grand scale from the planned obsolescence of the designs of these smart phones and the cosntant upgrade cycle. The fragility of the designs, screens and cases which means that phones last only a few years now (whereas my feature phone purchased new in 2006 is still happily making and receiving calls fine, despite the fact that i drop it weekly).
- And the iphone in particular, reinforced apples non standards compliant behaviour. With many instances of them using their large market share to drive technology to their whims.
So in my view, the smart phone trend, while bringing a whole lot of power to peoples pockets, has also started shaping the way people act, behave and even raise the next generations, in ways that many people hadn't considered. People are just happy that they can communicate with friends simply and wherever they are, buy products, and use software tools all very easily and conveniently. The costs always come later after things go too far. Kind of like the windows OS and its relationship to security in the 90s and early aughts. No one considered how running as admin, allowing anything to execute and not having software firewalls would negatively affect people until it was presented to them in the form of hack attacks and exploits galore. I can't even anticipate what shape a public backlash against smart phones would take, but it would make for some interesting sci-fi for sure.
(star trek did kind of do a good job predicting how i feel about the smart phone revolution in the TNG episode "the game", which is what i always think of when i enter a room, or subway car, and everyone is on their phone)
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
This reads like a circlejerk for Apple more than it says anything like an anniversary.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"...After 10 years, not a single serious malware case. It's not just luck; we need to congratulate Apple on this." --- And remind Apple this includes people who have legally jailbroken their iPhones. Something Apple said 'would' lead to serious malware problems.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I have never owned an iPhone. I still use a flip phone. I don't need to be connected to the net 24/7 and I'm not on that shit site Facebook either anyway.
Then you can legally stick your dick in it in most states.
I still use an old 4S that I got for free from my king ant who didn't want it anymore. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Like the original iPhone? Some people and I are still using a 4S. Anyone using older than that?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The Register as usual has nothing positive to say about Apple, Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak. Reason being is that a long time ago The Register was barred from an Apple event because of some particularly snarky comments and Andrew Orlowski has never forgotten about it. I guess a brit reporter bounced from a free piss-up is someone not to be trifled with. This being example of what reporter Chris Mellor took from a recent press conference:
.. unquote
..
.. the communication between sales and marketing is sometimes a problem too within a company. But when I joined FusionIO and I had one year where I was in my office everyday. I went on every sales call I could. I wanted to hear what the customers wanted ..
..
..
...'
Chris Mellor 28 Jun 2017 at 03:03: "The Apple wizard that was, Steve Wozniak, Stephen Gary Wozniak, age 66, is sitting right next to Lance as Primary's chief scientist. Primary's execs can hardly contain themselves. Look who we have on board, they quietly beamed. Beat that, you other startups.
Then it's the Apple II designer's turn to talk. We hold our breath. And he engages Woz waffle mode. It's a pleasure to talk to us. We're thanked for taking the time to come visit. He joined Primary Data, and he'd liked FusionIO, because the company visions matched his ideas. The thing is to keep stuff simple. Kick out the middle stuff. Keep it simple and as direct as you can, by design. That was it, basically."
Now lets see a part of what Steve Wozniak actually said: The Hive - Steve Wozniak, Dave Hitz & Lance Smith
11:41: Wozniak: 'Well you know what, when we started Apple, we didn't exactly have the culture of a big company. But we felt, the few of us that were there, it was important to hire professional people who knew what they were doing, not to remain just a couple of kids. And we also had this feeling that we were on top of a revolution, we had a great product. It was going to be the seeds of making something important in the world. So for the next two years almost nobody ever left. I mean we felt we were something important in the world. And I don't know if that's the culture that remains today but I'm sure it's a big seed of it
17:39 Wozniak:
19:12 Wozniak: But Apple made a lot of mistakes too putting out products like, ten years too early, five years too early. If you miss the timing because of the price and the value, that can hurt you too
19:37 Wozniak: Even as an engineer, all my life was getting good at reducing the complexity, reducing the size, reducing the cost. Because I had no money. Having no money and not having done it before were the two greatest thing I ever did
20:17 Wozniak: First of all you gotta have some engineering and talent that knows how to built it. And you should not conceive your product thinking then I'll go and get the engineering once I have the idea. The idea and some knowledge of building parts and what can't be made. People who have spent their life as makers, completing, really developing working prototypes and models of things, should be included in the starting team and you gotta have customer support. Somebody on your starting team is a customer. That absolutely lived there and knows what they want, what's good and what's bad and they also gotta have some good thinking. They can't have been just there, they gotta be like a person who really wants things to be right and not wrong. And not anything works anything is good, no. And I think you need those three people, they could all be in one person, or they could be two people or three, but you really need that in a founding team
Geez reporters are full of shit. I think bread and prostitution have outsold iPhones by many orders of magnitude. It's just a device, people. Get over it.
Hope your face doesnt break will all the pouting.
Believe what you will schill.
That Apple fanboi need/habit to imagine that everything Apple related is incredible and magical is really annoying...
really, so my phone tracks the identities of the people I encounter on the street?
It might. The facebook app knows where you are, and other people's apps do too. So it's possible that databases somewhere do know exactly that.
In the context of your comment, marketing actually means; Making something usable, as opposed to being terrible.
No, I really meant "Try to bring it to market XYZ".
Every prior incarnation of touch-screen phones were uniformly unusably bad.
Microsoft's shitty god awful OS != "Every prior incarnation of touch-screen phones"
They where other contenders with better OSes.
PalmOS was a very neat OS that successfully launched the whole concept of PDAs (from the ashes of Apple's own failed Netwon attempt, no less).
BlackBerry largeley predates iPhone too.
"Pocket Internet Explorer"? A 'start' menu on a phone? Slow, clunky, ugly interfaces? Hard to configure? This is why they weren't popula
This is why I never went to a Microsoft's-Shit-Powered PDA.
Started using PalmOS with a Palm IIIc and never looked back.
it's not because people weren't being told to use them. It's not because these things weren't marketed, they were. It's because they sucked.
The tremendous success of Palm and later BlackBerry in their own markets (business type, academics, doctors, etc.) begs to differ.
That was the whole core success of Palm : Making a sleak interface that even a non-nerd could use, and was very responsive and easy to get around.
Just push a button and/or just start scribbling with the stylus and the PDA gets exactly what you need.
You can google around and read articles about their story : after the flop of previous competitors (including - ironically - Apple's own Newton), a group of designers (that would eventually become Palm - though they initially sold hardware as 3com) spent lots of effort to make a PDA that would not suck, and that could be as handy and useful as possible.
No fuss with a stupid windows-95 styled "start" menu. That peculiar shit was Microsoft invention. :
They attempted to replay the same event as back with the Pen Computer craze
see a new potential market emerging (here: PDAs), and rush in some half-baked shit of their own with the intent to occupy the market.
Almost more wanting that somebody else doesn't get successful rather than trying to actually conquer the market.
(To the point that their shit tanks the emerging market and analysts take Microsoft suckiness as "there's no consumer interest in XYZ").
I was under the impression that this time Microsoft wasn't as successful at wiping the competition (thanks to Palm managing to establish themselves with a successful line of products).
But the fact that some like you think that "PDA" == "Microsoft Pocket PC", makes me doubt it.
The iPhone came along, and sure, at the start it didn't even have apps. But it managed to achieve the not inconsiderable feat of not sucking.
As had Palm's PalmOS-powered PDA done in the past.
And unlike Palm and BlackBerry, they managed to persuade Joe Six Pack that having a networked computer in their pocked was worth it.
(Whereas Palm and the like tried - successfully - to persuade business type that having their personal agenda in their pocket was worth it.
to persuade college student that a small computer they can store schedule, take notes, organize and play a few games was worth it.
to persuade doctors that rather than struggling which of the 20 different "pocket-size reference" they should take, a single pocketable and easy to use computer device is better.
etc.)
While you might not think that constitutes innovation, you would be quite wrong.
I'm not saying that "not sucking" is not a significant caracteristic of the iPhone.
I'm saying that pocket-sized computer that didn't suck were already available for around a decade back then and iPhone wasn't revolutionnary back then, no matter what shit Microsoft manader to make with their shitty OS.
Apple leveraged two thing :
- Their quasi-cu
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Your point on battery endurance is a bit ridiculous, use your iPhone like you would a dumb phone and its battery will last a lot longer.
I came from the other point of view.
There was no way I could use an iPhone the way I've been (ab)using my Palm PDAs before.
I bought a Palm IIIc around 2000 and used it a my daily driver during a good part of my studies.
I took all my notes during lectures on it. Typing on the foldable keyboard, or scribling with the stylus when on the move.
Even under strong use, if I forgot to charge it during the night, it could still be holding the next day to the end.
The thing is, it was an *PDA*. It didn't have it's own connection, it relied on IrDA tethering if I wanted to check e-mail (with later PDAs like my Palm Tungsten T3 I could use bluetooth tethering or a Wifi SDIO card, though that last one similarily reduced battery life).
So the pocket computer wasn't constantly connected.
(Meanwhile, the phone I was using the most was a sturdy dumb phone, Ericsson T39 - good battery life, specially when using a fat replacement battery)
Each device with its own adapted battery.
On the other hand, the smartphone trend started to pack all the above functionality in a single device, sharing a single meager battery.
And with the race to make the device as thin as possible, the space constrain aren't getting any better.
So of course the first iPhone was going to have a not so great battery performance (doing all the work of a PDA and a feature phone, on a single battery).
The non-replaceable battery didn't help.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The core Phone functions on a blackberry were well thought out and more mature than Android and possibly iPhone (Caveat, I've never used an iPhone):
dialer was better. I could place a call in a few keys, straight from the homescreen. No switching between keyboard and screen. All keyboard. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Same for messaging. Other smartphones: open dialer app and fumble between keys and screen
Memo app: could locate any note very quickly, assuming that you have the right info in the notes name. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Contacts: find any contact quickly. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Call quality: haven't improved, but this is the carriers fault. Also Google voice and sip, pro, etc...doesn't support hd calling between them and cell phones.
The core Phone functions on a blackberry were well thought out and more mature than Android and possibly iPhone (Caveat, I've never used an iPhone):
dialer was better. I could place a call in a few keys, straight from the homescreen. No switching between keyboard and screen. All keyboard. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Same for messaging. Other smartphones: open dialer app and fumble between keys and screen
Memo app: could locate any note very quickly, assuming that you have the right info in the notes name. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Contacts: find any contact quickly. Other smartphones: open app and fumble between keys and screen
Call quality: haven't improved, but this is the carriers fault. Also Google voice and sip, pro, etc...doesn't support hd calling between them and cell phones
Mod parent up.
The Nokia Communicator series were far more versatile & powerful than the iPhone (and the Blackberry offerings) for several years. Even as a long-time iPhone convert; I still miss a lot of things about the Communicators, such as the openness of the platform & an actual proper keyboard (on-screen keyboards have always been comparatively poor).
Is the iPhone really such a must-have, if you had already managed to be seven years without it?
Nokia's absence from the U.S. market means, that everyone in the U.S. is unaware of Nokia smartphones that preceded the iPhone. Nokia's Symbian devices had built-in maps and lots more.
It's as if Americans are claiming that Apple was the one that invented the wheel before everyone else.