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So what was it that the iPhone done that was so revolutionary? Touchscreen phones

  • 24-03-2021 12:59PM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,604
    Ms
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    Already existed so it was not that. What was it?
    Just watching a documentary on Steve Jobs and by correcting he was one horrible person the way he treated some people who worked or had worked for him but then decide to do other things.
    Maybe it's the operating system but I never got my head around that. Always found it way more awkward compared to a Microsoft or Android operating system.

    Live long and Prosper

    Peace and long life.



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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,306 TheValeyard
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    Great marketing campaign

    All eyes on Kursk. Slava Ukraini.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,148 Smee_Again
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    Marketing and styling.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,213 Allinall
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    Not using a capital "I" was genius.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,568 KevRossi
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    Allinall wrote: »
    Not using a capital "I" was genius.

    i always thought that too.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,329 Ubbquittious
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    I had a Nokia E61 I think at the time of the launch of the first iPhone. Technically it was a better phone, it had Voice over IP built in and could run Talkonaut which provided similar functionality to whatsapp and similar apps



    Problem was people didn't like operating system and menu interface and those features were hard to set up for non technical people. When the iPhone came out I found the interface really dumbed down and restricted. I bought a first generation iPhone and quickly sold it on because it lacked features, had no physical keyboard and found it really restrictive to use. But other people loved iPhones because you could press on Safari and ""teh interwebs"" would appear on your phone


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 81,219 biko
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    Design really. They didn't invent anything of significance.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,639 completedit
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    Alchemy!


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,313 Wibbs
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    biko wrote: »
    Design really. They didn't invent anything of significance.
    Apple or the iphone specifically? In the former they certainly developed much of the IT landscape for ordinary people. A laptop today looks like a powerbook of the early 90's and doesn't look like other brands laptops from back then.

    On the phone front it was the usual Apple trick - and it's a hard one to pull off - where they took various existing or partially existing tech and features and jammed them together in a useful and cohesive way for most people. Most people don't fiddle about with settings or features and when they do it's at the start and they leave them alone after that. They just want the simple life. They don't see it as restrictive for the most part. Nerds and engineers do. Most IT brands were aimed at and developed for and by nerdy engineers, Apple went the other direction for the most part. We saw similar when MP3 players came along. The Windows based ones were more powerful with more options and features, the ipod was majorly dumbed down by comparison and was laughed at by pundits and techie types and which sold more?

    The first Android prototypes were copies of Blackberry.

    Android_mobile_phone_platform_early_device-768x1024.jpg

    Well because the Blackberry was all the rage so they copied that. Then the iphone came out and when they saw the writing on the wall they went and built a "homage" to that too. If Apple got it so wrong then Android phones would look like updated Blackberrys and they don't.

    To be fair to Microsoft they went a different and more unique direction with their phone OS and GUI and it was a good one IMHO. I liked it anyway.

    Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,084 theguzman
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    I have been using an iPhone for over a decade now, back between 2009-2014 Android was appallingly bad especially until around 2012-13. iPhones are easy, stylish, desirable and hold huge resale value also. Androids still get viruses. I'm happy to pay the Premium for Apple.


  • Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 7,433 pleasant Co.
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    Being first with an accurate capacitive multi touch touchscreen matched with an easy to use and functional OS.


    Every other phone (bar the LG Prada) that used a touchscreen at the time used resistive, which were only accurate if you used a stylus, quite the pain in the hoop. The aforementioned LG Prada did not use android, had a crap battery and no built in wifi - internet over the 2g/Edge network wasn't very effective.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,770 maccored
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    gorilla glass and proper touch screen technology.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,224 Gradius
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    They cornered the market on fools and money.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,140 Gregor Samsa
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    Here's one of the early prototypes of the iPhone, known as the "purple prototype". This is from 2005:

    Purple-prototype.jpeg

    This, on the other hand, is what phones looked like in 2005: https://www.mobilegazette.com/2005-review-0512x19.htm

    The iPhone concept and design was completely revolutionary for the time. Even in 2007, when the iPhone was actually released, the vast majority of other phones didn't look or act anything like it. There was the LG Prada also released in 2007 which had a full touchscreen interface, but it didn't have any kind of app ecosystem (The iPhone didn't allow third party executable apps at the beginning - the App Store didn't open until 2008 - but it did allow web apps to be installed, and had an SDK to support them from launch.).

    Like it or not, the design and the concept it embodied was unique at the time and has totally dominated smartphone design and engineering since then.

    Here's a round-up of phones from 2007. https://www.mobilegazette.com/2007-review-07x12x12.htm

    The iPhone is in the "bad" section. And yet here we are, 16 years later, and what do all our phones look and act like?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,945 Ash.J.Williams
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    Used android since they began but work forced iPhones on me and they are ****ing amazing


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,685 wonski
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    Never had an iPhone, not a huge fan of their stuff and prices, but the first iPhone was something else and it was definitely special.

    Now all the phones are pretty much the same and there isn't much left to change in terms of functionality.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,698 Strumms
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    Never actually owned an Iphone but had one for work for a short time... a few months...they were fine, perfectly functional for what it was needed for but I just always preferred the Android operating system...so much more flexible and the cameras especially in the early models were light years better on android...

    Had a personal S2 when I had the first iPhone for work... just couldn’t get my head around the love and obsession with everything iPhone and Apple / Apple geeks ( what are they all about ) when compared to the quality and flexibility of Samsung...


  • Posts: 4,214 [Deleted User]
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    Used android since they began but work forced iPhones on me and they are ****ing amazing

    Opposite here. Always had an iPhone but my work phone is a Samsung and I don't even I'll ever get used to it. Even answering it is difficult.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,794 Aongus Von Bismarck
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    Used android since they began but work forced iPhones on me and they are ****ing amazing

    I've worked in banking for the past 15 years, and we were forced to use Blackberry until 2014 for accessing corporate email etc in the company . We also had to use a physical token pad to generate one time codes. Dreadful.

    There was a move towards the Apple ecosystem for mobile devices. I wasn't a huge fan of iOS at first, but now I love its simplicity, excellent camera, privacy controls, and how it fits into my workflow. I'm not so sure the mobile OS is as important as it once was, as I now spend most of my day accessing Microsoft resources using their apps. An 'over-the-top' play by them.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,785 The Golden Miller
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    Apple have pioneered pretty much nothing in their history. They were going bankrupt until the success of the iPod. They market their products well, and that's about it. Their quality is often lacking too, compared to other companies.

    Sony pretty much controlled the electronic market up to the early 00's, and their huge mistake was pushing their mini-disk player over their mp3 walkman. The mini-disk player flopped and let Apple in with their mp3 player and Sony lost huge ground they never made up. That's where Apple's current success stems from, Sonys mistake.

    But Sony were actually a company who pioneered much of the technology we have now




  • Eat up Martha.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,797 hatrickpatrick
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    As others have said, it was the ability to combine multiple existing and extremely popular products.

    I'd also say that integrating a full internet experience was crucial. Anyone who remember what WAP was like (before Nicki Minaj made it fun again) will know that it was an absolute feckin' nightmare to use. Incredibly slow, most websites couldn't hack it, etc.

    The one thing that I always felt would hold the iPhone back was Jobs' public spat with Adobe which led to Flash Player being banned from the App Store. As anyone who was a frequent internet user in the 2000s will know, Flash was absolutely integral to pretty much everything multimedia - for instance, the lack of Flash on the iPhone meant that initially, you couldn't run YouTube, RTE Player, videos on News Websites, etc. It was a major, major missing feature for a device which claimed to replicate the full internet on a phone, but as it turns out, just over a decade later the iPhone is still insanely popular and Flash has just been nuked by Adobe. I'd posit that Jobs won this war and that Flash's demise is a direct consequence of a device which refused to support it becoming the dominant way people communicate over the internet. Sure, Flash had its security flaws like most software, but IMO the primary reason these stopped being patched and it was allowed to fall apart so spectacularly was because Adobe wasn't bothered funding the ongoing maintenance and development of a software platform which was incompatible with devices which were beginning to account for a gigantic chunk of total internet traffic.

    Here's a video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone for the first time - note the audience reaction to the idea of a combined iPod and phone, the thought had just never occurred to anyone up until this point.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,785 The Golden Miller
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    As others have said, it was the ability to combine multiple existing and extremely popular products.

    I'd also say that integrating a full internet experience was crucial. Anyone who remember what WAP was like (before Nicki Minaj made it fun again) will know that it was an absolute feckin' nightmare to use. Incredibly slow, most websites couldn't hack it, etc.

    The one thing that I always felt would hold the iPhone back was Jobs' public spat with Adobe which led to Flash Player being banned from the App Store. As anyone who was a frequent internet user in the 2000s will know, Flash was absolutely integral to pretty much everything multimedia - for instance, the lack of Flash on the iPhone meant that initially, you couldn't run YouTube, RTE Player, videos on News Websites, etc. It was a major, major missing feature for a device which claimed to replicate the full internet on a phone, but as it turns out, just over a decade later the iPhone is still insanely popular and Flash has just been nuked by Adobe. I'd posit that Jobs won this war and that Flash's demise is a direct consequence of a device which refused to support it becoming the dominant way people communicate over the internet. Sure, Flash had its security flaws like most software, but IMO the primary reason these stopped being patched and it was allowed to fall apart so spectacularly was because Adobe wasn't bothered funding the ongoing maintenance and development of a software platform which was incompatible with devices which were beginning to account for a gigantic chunk of total internet traffic.

    Here's a video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone for the first time - note the audience reaction to the idea of a combined iPod and phone, the thought had just never occurred to anyone up until this point.


    Sony had merged their walkman music player to their phone years before this. The idea had been thought of. Another case of wrapping up what already existed with nice aesthetic frills


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 683 TenLeftFingers
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    I had a Sony Experia and Samsung S3. I'd gotten used to the various snags with each of them until I gradually realised the my wife's iPhone didn't have any of those issues.

    When I finally got one, I missed the ability to customize and run emulators. But it did the basics better and saved me time so I stuck with it.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,532 jmcc
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    AMKC wrote: »
    Already existed so it was not that. What was it?
    The interface was instinctive. The web browser was a real web browser rather than a cut down one with limited functionality. It was available (initially in the US) with an Internet access bundle from telcos when accessing the Internet on a mobile device was really expensive.

    Marketing was important but people became addicted to their iPhone and it also became a status symbol. Some of the larger mobile phone manufacturers had invested in their own top level domain (.MOBI) and Apple effectively nuked it with the iPhone by making .COM the default option for browsing. The .MOBI was an attempt to impose a kind of mobile web standard but the size and resolution of the iPhone screen combined with a web browser that could work on ordinary website effectively caught all these other players by surprise.

    Regards...jmcc


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,116 Junkyard Tom
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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,938 Grab All Association
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    I can remember 2007 when it launched. I’m ashamed to admit I bought one. It spent the remainder of its life in the drawer battery swelled up inside it. Ffs there was no 3G or Video calling, ****e camera etc. I gave them another chance when the iPhone 4 was released. Still wasn’t perfected at that point. The Nokia N8 was a far superior machine that year and I bought one. 16GB storage, 12mp camera, 3G calling, made in Finland! It took other manufacturers years to match those specs. It was until the iPhone 5s was released that I took Apple seriously. It wasn’t long after the Snowden revelations when Apple started taken privacy of its customers seriously. iOS 7 too got rid of those silly 3D graphics for a cleaner flat design. Build quality improved significantly. Since then I’ve stuck with them because 99% of all my work is done on a laptop. I want a HMD Nokia 8.3 but can’t seem to find them in stock unlocked.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,910 Wanderer78
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    Bring together a whole pile of technology, in which a significant proportion of it was invented by public sector institutions and/or with public money, and made a handful of people extremely wealthy, nice job!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,797 hatrickpatrick
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    Sony had merged their walkman music player to their phone years before this. The idea had been thought of. Another case of wrapping up what already existed with nice aesthetic frills

    Have you got a link to the aforementioned Sony device? Specifically, did it have a whole-device touchscreen or one of those annoying plastic keyboards, and did it support multiple touches? Because anyone who used touch screen devices prior to the iPhone will remember that the idea of using them day to day for anything complicated like typing or texting would have put most people off - they tended to be slow and glitchy, and as Jobs mentions in his presentation, requiring the use of a stylus. Texting at the kind of light-speed you can do on an iPhone would have been totally impractical.

    Of course, it's possible that Sony solved all of these issues before Apple, but I've googled a bit and can't find any specific products that Sony put out there with this functionality, just articles about how Apple may have stolen Sony's ideas.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,938 Grab All Association
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    Have you got a link to the aforementioned Sony device? Specifically, did it have a whole-device touchscreen or one of those annoying plastic keyboards, and did it support multiple touches? Because anyone who used touch screen devices prior to the iPhone will remember that the idea of using them day to day for anything complicated like typing or texting would have put most people off - they tended to be slow and glitchy, and as Jobs mentions in his presentation, requiring the use of a stylus. Texting at the kind of light-speed you can do on an iPhone would have been totally impractical.

    Of course, it's possible that Sony solved all of these issues before Apple, but I've googled a bit and can't find any specific products that Sony put out there with this functionality, just articles about how Apple may have stolen Sony's ideas.

    Note that they were called Sony Ericsson Walkman. Candy bar devices. I have a number of old Sony Ericsson phones here in my museum from the period I can show you later.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,140 Gregor Samsa
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    Have you got a link to the aforementioned Sony device? Specifically, did it have a whole-device touchscreen or one of those annoying plastic keyboards, and did it support multiple touches?

    I think the poster is just talking about the idea of combining a phone with a music player. Sony Ericsson had been using the Walkman branding since the W800 Walkman in 2005, which was very much a candybar phone. But it looked or acted or functioned nothing like an iPhone. Sony Ericsson didn't release a full-device touchscreen phone until the Satio in 2009, although the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 from 2008 had a large touchscreen that had a physical qwerty keyboard hidden behind it that could slide out.

    People will rightly point out that X did such and such first, and Y had this or that previously. Apple very clearly originated the entire "package" of a smart phone, and the entire industry has been following that for the past 15 years or so. Apple certainly overplays it's hand in what it claims to be novel features, but their detractors also overplay theirs in denying the importance of their vision and execution.

    Facebook wasn't the first social network. Google wasn't the first search engine. Amazon wasn't the first eCommerce store. Windows wasn't the first GUI operating system. Success and influence doesn't depend on being the first. It depends on having the right idea, at the right time, with the right execution. Either harnessing or creating the zeitgeist. Apple have proven to be very, very successful at that on multiple fronts - and that's not just down to clever marketing.


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