

Before Apple introduced the iPhone - unalone
http://counternotions.com/2009/08/26/pre-iphone/

======
ZeroGravitas
He goes a bit fanboy, and it's perhaps a tad US-centric, but the basic gist is
correct.

Some of the points seem a bit of a stretch, but only because they're obvious
once you realise you're selling a tiny, internet-connected computer (which can
also make phone calls).

One big thing that Apple made easy that he misses is the ability to upgrade
your phone software through iTunes just by plugging it in to your computer. I
did it a couple of times with Sony Ericcsons and the process was positively
baroque.

One relevant failure to note, Apple tried to sell the first iPhone at the
market rate. US carriers obviously didn't like that and now we are back to
subsidies that are opaque and confusing to consumers, just the way they like
it.

(Note the exact same happened with iTunes and the Music Industry. Everyone
else caved to them and progress stagnated till Apple shook everything up.
Couple of years later, once the immediate threat of everything being DRM
encrusted WMA has faded from people's minds, and Apple becomes the evil
empire.)

~~~
caffeine
Honestly, you know what the difference was? Sex appeal. Pure and simple. When
iPhone came out, I had the flashiest PDA available. It had WiFi and I could do
phone calls over VoIP and watch movies.

But man I dropped that thing like a J2EE Enterprise Hooker when the iPhone
came out. I mean it's sleek and it's gorgeous and the fracking menus have
_momentum!_ Are you kidding?! Even the texture feels good, the glass plate is
smooth. If ever there was a piece of tech that could get you laid, this was
it.

 _That_ 's why I got an iPhone. The fact that it had all those cool technical
abilities and a great free SDK is just how I rationalized it to myself later.

~~~
tjogin
I _think_ I agree with what you're saying, I just have a really hard time
describing hardware or software as being "sexy". I'd just say that the iPhone,
unlike all of its predecessors, simply didn't suck. It was a joy to use it.
Maybe we mean the same thing. Certainly, I didn't expect people to want to
fuck me because I had one.

~~~
pohl
There's a fundamental problem with the concept of 'cool' that causes blast-
damage to the semantics of words around it. Long ago, the word 'awesome'
actually described something that inspired a sense of awe. Now it's something
people say when someone offers them a can of cold, unsolicited soda. 'Wicked'
once meant 'evil'. Now a mildy impressive not-even-very-extreme-sports move,
like a skateboard grind on a concrete curb is 'wicked'. The word 'sweet' once
referred to something that contained sugar. Now an expensive car is a 'sweet
ride'. In days gone by, one had to advocate complete and total social reform
in order to be 'radical'. Later, all one needed was acid-washed denim and
poofy bangs.

Alas, sex hasn't been an essential part of sexy for a long, long time.

~~~
tjogin
True enough, but the post to which I replied didn't just use the word "sex
appeal" in a to me alien way, he also mentioned that this device would "get
him laid". Jokingly, of course, but I'm still unsure we even mean the same
thing.

If he simply meant that the iPhone was "awesome" by the definition you just
mentioned, then I'm in agreement, but if he meant that he liked the device
because of the reactions he thought he'd get from his surrounding due to
having one, then we do not.

~~~
caffeine
I mean both, actually. Not only did it have a fundamentally appealing design
in every detail, but it was also (in the early days) a great opener!

"Ooooooo, is that the _eye_ -Phone? Can I _touch_ it? OMG, this ball-tilt game
is _awesome!_ " ;)

~~~
pohl
So true...it's the perfect platform for Mystery's Photo Routine, because it
encourages the use of pinch-to-zoom and stipe-to-pan - you're that much closer
to kino escalation. ;-)

------
dejb
1-8

these apply to the US only.

9\. Mobile devices were phones first and last, not usable handheld computers

Pocketpc and Palm phones were fully fledged handheld computers for years
before. If you don't believe me check the list of apps at

<http://www.smartphonemag.com/awards/winners_ppc_2005.html>

10\. Even the smartest phones didn’t have seamless WiFi integration

Maybe not seemless but functional. A search for 'wifi switching iphone' shows
everything isn't perfect yet.

11\. Without Visual Voice Mail, messages couldn’t be managed non-linearly

Don't know. Not really my thing.

12\. There were no manufacturer owned and operated on-the-phone application
stores as the sole source

True the app store is an innovation. It's a great idea apart from the
compulsory part.

13\. An on-the-phone store having 65,000 apps downloaded nearly 2 billion
times was not on anyone’s radar screen

This is a repeat of 12. However it should be noted that there would have been
1000s of pocket pc apps available in 2006.

14-16

These are all basically about the app store. Pretty much repeating 12 and 13.

17\. Buttons, keys, joysticks, sliders…anything but the screen was the focus
of phones

There where popular touch screen which had only a few buttons. My recently
retired HTC Magician (not Magic) was one of these.

18\. Phones didn’t come with huge 3.5″ touch screens

Many Did. Some had bigger screens.

19\. Pervasive multitouch, gesture-based UI was science fiction

Apple did bring many of these to market for the first time. I'm not sure if
anyone had developed a phone intended to be used by hand as opposed to stylus.
that said the stylus is pretty powerful in it's own right.

20\. Actually usable, multi-language, multitouch virtual keyboards on phones
didn’t exist

Deliberate repeat of multitouch. Apart from that many virtual keyboard existed

21\. Integrated sensors like accelerometers and proximity detectors had no
place in phones

'The first phone from the company to feature an accelerometer was the Sony
Ericsson W910 and the Sony Ericsson K850.'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerometer>

22\. Phones could never compete in 3D/gaming with dedicated portable consoles

I had quake running on my HTC Magicician in 2006. There seemed to be a lot of
other games available.

23\. iPod-class audio/video players on mobiles didn’t exist

Many phones had popular music players.

24\. No phone had ever offered a desktop-like web browser experience

Opera

25\. Sophisticated SDKs and phones were strangers to each other

No. Wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

so what are we left with

1\. helped in the process of freeing US users from bad carrier slavery

2\. The app store

3\. A user interface designed to be used with fingers including multitouch and
swipe.

Good achievements but they didn't 'invent' the genre. If you take away 1. You
are left with an evolutionary not revolutionary contribution.

~~~
rimantas
You dismiss many of the point on the ground "existed, but maybe not as
usable".

That's exactly why iPhone became popular: because it made many of nice
features actually usable for the John S. User, not only for John Geek.

~~~
dejb
I can only count one. Can you point the others out?

~~~
alain94040
Accelerometers for instance: when I dial using the keypad, then move the phone
to my ear, the accelerometer detects this movement and switches off the
keypad, so my ears don't dial extra numbers on my behalf.

I don't know, but did the phone you mention (first to have accelerometer) make
good use of them?

~~~
avinashv
It's not an accelerometer that does this, it's a proximity sensor. It's a
little preposterous to imagine the phone can account for every possible way I
take my phone to my ear.

The iPhone uses the accelerometer primarily to rotate the screen. There's not
a whole lot more (apart from some niche applications) that _any_ phone
manufacturer does besides that.

~~~
gcanyon
"niche applications?" Have you seen Pocket Universe?
<http://www.craicdesign.com/>

The first time you look up at the night sky, see a star, hold your iPhone (3gs
for best experience) up in front of that star and see the display show exactly
the same view, with labels, you _know_ the compass and accelerometer have a
purpose -- nay, a holy calling.

~~~
dejb
> 3gs for best experience

Yes cause the only the 3gs (amongst iPhones) has a compass. So that isn't
really relevant to the discussion of what the iPhone introduced to the world.
Other phones had a compass (and GPS for that matter) a lot earlier.

------
asnyder
Many of these points are not correct. I had an excellent Siemens SX66 (HTC
BlueAngel) years before the iPhone was introduced. The screen was a nice 3.5"
touchscreen, had excellent wifi and unlimited internet (at about $10 less than
it is now, with no 5gb cap), and allowed me to install thousands of third
party applications. Not to mention that Microsoft had a pretty decent .NET
PocketPc framework that made writing apps a breeze.

While it's true that the iPhone did introduce some nifty features and concepts
that changed the smartphone landscape, this list is overblown and incorrect.

~~~
asnyder
Wow, all of my posts now being downmodded excessively. Hacker News is suppose
to be one of the few places left for unbias and rational discussion.

I guess that's not the case anymore, especially when it comes to apple
products.

~~~
GHFigs
Complaining about voting reliably earns a downvote from me. Such comments add
nothing to the discussion.

Additionally, snarky jabs at the rest of the HN userbase for not providing
unbiased and rational discussion are not a good way of getting unbiased and
rational replies. It is more likely to perpetuate fanboy/hater bickering,
which we can all at least _try_ to keep to a minimum.

------
wallflower
Before Apple introduced the iPhone, some software manufacturers thought it was
OK to wipe out everything on your mobile device when upgrading the OS.

"NOTE: Before proceeding please ensure that all data on your Wing is backed
up, and the e-mail settings for each of your e-mail accounts are known or are
written down. Installing the new software will erase all the data on the
device.

NOTE: All third party applications and data that remain on the device prior to
downloading the new software will be deleted and un-retrievable. Third party
applications will need to be re-downloaded after the new software has been
installed."

<https://support.t-mobile.com/doc/tm52082.xml>

~~~
andreyf
An interesting note: after I lost my iPhone, restoring the replacement from
the backup I didn't realize iTunes had been making reset not just the e-mail
settings and contacts, but the ring tone settings, wireless network passwords,
etc. As much as I try to stay away from being a fanboy, I was _very_ pleased
with the UX.

------
zedwill
The article mentions Apple as it had made the iphone and the app store out of
thin air. It mentions nokia, motorola and the other manufacturers as being
unable to create such a innovative product like the iphone. It is not true.

It is a pity Palm shooted itself after successful devices like Palm Pilot or
Tungsten. Palm could have made the iphone. It had extensive experience in
touch screen devices. It had previous endeavors in phone-pda hybrids like the
Treo.

Palm could have made the jump, if only they haven't split in palm one and palm
source and keep the good work on.

And the same story happens with Amazon Kindle and similar devices. I have been
reading ebooks in Palm (thanks to plucker, great open source reader) for ages
before ebook readers even existed.

~~~
rimantas
_It mentions nokia, motorola and the other manufacturers as being unable to
create such a innovative product like the iphone. It is not true._

So they did make one? If they did not, how is that not true?

~~~
stse
Because the smartphone market is a small part of the global market. The iphone
is also one of the most expensive phones around. In a few years when the
market gets more mature we will see a lot more competition from the "other
manufacturers". Most of which also provides telecommunication systems.

------
cosmo7
Article is predicated on the idea that evil and innovation are mutually
exclusive. I think it's more true that evil and innovation are pretty tightly
coupled.

~~~
roc
I don't think evil is related to size or innovation; it's just selective
reporting.

E.g. People only care about whether a company is evil if it creates products
and services they _want_ to use, or whether the company is so massive that it
can't be avoided.

Small companies can't, and companies with crappy products don't, inflict their
evil upon you -- so no-one notes whether they're evil or not, skewing results.

It could well be (and I believe it to be the case) that _every_ company is
essentially 'evil', but that tendency can only be exposed when they attain the
requisite leverage to push what they want, as a priority, onto the market.

~~~
unalone
Perhaps it's not evil so much as it is difficulty in making decisions?
Everybody has good intentions, and most people fuck them up at some point or
other. The difference is that when large companies fuck up, it hurts more than
when individuals do, and it's more noticeable.

------
Zak
_There were no manufacturer owned and operated on-the-phone application stores
as the sole source_

A sole source for applications on a given platform is a Bad Thing. I say this
as a supporter of the principle of app stores. It's better for the consumer on
most any computing platform to have a single default system for software
purchase, download, installation and updates. I find the centralized package
management on most Linux distributions to be one of their biggest advantages
over other platforms. It's the single part that's a problem; it means that the
market does not have the final say on what will become popular on the
platform.

------
c00p3r
For me, when someone point me an iPhone the first association that comes to
mind is a brilliantly implemented concept of a deck of cards. This is an
essence of iPhone - not only touch-based interface, but this touch technology
along with carefully designed properly sized, cached content with fast
possible switching between "cards". The concept of card tricks. That sells.

There are the second part - implementation - OSX based kernel, llvm-gcc,
webkit-based browser, but all these techniques are ordinary.

And of course, they have their sales and marketing. Together that won.

btw, N900 is an very interesting move. It could be positioned as a "standard
mobile computer" or "just a hardware". In that case community will write
everything, like it was in the story of Linux.

