
Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This - evo_9
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/sunday/steve-jobs-never-wanted-us-to-use-our-iphones-like-this.html
======
aylmao
> The [2007 iPhone launch] presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a
> simpler and more constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have
> over a decade later. For example, he doesn’t focus much on apps.

Well, this is because there were no apps. It's was a brand new platform!

> Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us
> with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls,
> generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of
> users’ daily lives.

Jobs didn't die after presenting the iPhone in 2007 though. He passed away in
2011, well into the "there's an app for that" ad campaign that boasted how the
iPhone _could_ in fact radically change the rhythm of users' daily lives.

~~~
sp332
There were no apps because they assumed everyone would use websites. Which is
still mostly what I use my phone for (although I have an Android).

~~~
jharger
I do not believe this to be true at all. The App Store opened in July 2008,
just over a year after the initial iPhone was released. That means that likely
had to at least be on the Apple product roadmap well before the iPhone was
even released.

~~~
chc
He explicitly said in the iPhone launch that the intended way to create apps
for the iPhone was to make a website:

> The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing
> Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the
> iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They
> can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on
> Google Maps.

> And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need
> if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write
> amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very
> sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today.

I remember a lot of jokes in the Mac developer community at the time about
what a "sweet story" this was. It seemed like the public SDK was a response to
jailbreak apps being more popular than the intended "iPhone Web apps."

~~~
jharger
I'm not debating that he said that, I'm just suggesting that it was a
marketing ploy, either to buy the teams some time to iron out the details with
the app store, or some clever product strategy to release the app store later
(which was hugely popular when it did come out)

...but then I don't know, I wasn't there.

------
bouncing
I'm not sure there's a strong connection with Jobs' desire to limit native
code execution and social good will. It's probably worth pointing out that
reportedly, Jobs himself kept iOS devices away from his own children because
he considered them "too addictive."

Apple's original position on third party apps was that they deserved on the
web, in what would eventually become known as "progressive web app" form. That
position was abandoned not just because it was a mediocre user experience, but
also, it actually prevented device lock-in, which is something Jobs obviously
craved.

You can argue that some apps are time-sucks, or bad for your overall well-
being, and I'll be right there with you. But that has relatively little to do
with whether they're shitty web apps or native code apps.

And also, the fact that smartphones do way more than originally imagined is a
great thing. In most parts of the world, I can pull out my phone, tap a few
characters, and a car will magically pull up where I am and take me wherever I
need to go. Or bring me food. I can translate anything to anything. I know the
second a flight is delayed, which lets me be more present in life. My life is
assuredly better because my smartphone is turing-complete and runs third party
software.

~~~
endorphone
"Apple's original position on third party apps..."

To add some necessary context, Apple's position on almost everything is "what
we are currently doing is best" (and from that "what our competitors are doing
is wrong" or "what you wish it did is wrong"). Building a whole native
development platform, curation system, etc, is a massive undertaking, so with
the first device Jobs unsurprisingly pitched their current state as ideal. And
as they adopted new choices, those became the new ideal. Any who read too much
into Jobs various sentiments that could best be expressed as sales pitches
might be going astray.

~~~
bouncing
That's a good point.

"We haven't figured out third party app curation yet" might have been
accurate, but not in Apple's style to admit.

~~~
CharlesW
Exactly. Or even more likely, "we have a pretty good idea of what we want the
native apps experience to be, but it's not ready/good enough yet".

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bradenb
I think the author is wrong on nearly all counts. I think Steve Jobs loved to
see what people were interested in and find a way to make it easier to have
and use. The iPod was a way of taking something people loved to do (listen to
music) and make it easier with "1000 songs in your pocket."

At the risk of romanticizing: from what I've read, he wasn't about creating
brand-new concepts, he was all about taking existing concepts and turning them
into what people really wanted them to be.

Lastly, I think the author gives Apple and Steve Jobs far too much credit.
Apps didn't become successful on these platforms because of app vendors, they
became successful because people started asking "what else can I do with this
phone?" People _want_ to constantly feel "in the loop" and "productive."

~~~
hopler
Right. this article is someone who has no credibility for their own argument
trying to borrow credibility from a dead person by outlandishly claiming that
the famous dead person agrees with them.

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richardwhiuk
I'm not sure Steve Jobs's opinion here is relevant.

I'm also not convinced that just because Steve Jobs pitched something one way
in a presentation so that the audience would understand what the device meant,
meant that he didn't see a large vision of an always-on, internet-enabled
device.

~~~
gibolt
"Internet communicator"

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goodroot
I get lambasted for this opinion all the time, but I am still holding it...

The Blackberry was the peak of efficient, minimal phone usage:

* It optimized for doing things like short letter and message writing well through the keyboard.

* Blackberry messenger still leads in terms of features that can reduce noise: appear offline and availability settings, friends lists.

* It focused on productivity applications, screen size kept browsing to "as needed".

As a Canadian, I remember when the iPhone started to take over. My friends
were sitting around playing Paper Toss, meanwhile my berry sat quietly in my
pocket.

~~~
Yetanfou
Yet that same Blackberry was also nicknamed 'Crackberry' due to the seemingly
addictive nature of the device which had some users glued to its screen just
as much as current devices do. The conclusion to draw from this is probably
that some people will get addicted to anything and everything which gives them
the semblance of 'connectivity'.

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ddebernardy
> In the remarks, after discussing the phone’s interface and hardware, he
> spends an extended amount of time demonstrating how the integrated iPod
> leverages the touch screen before detailing the many ways Apple engineers
> improved the age-old process of making phone calls. “It’s the best iPod
> we’ve ever made,” Mr. Jobs exclaims at one point. “The killer app is making
> calls,” he later adds. Both lines spark thunderous applause. He doesn’t
> dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet
> connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address.

> The presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more
> constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade
> later.

Having actually seen the video years ago, this article strikes me as a big
mischaracterization of what Jobs said -- let alone envisioned, which only Jobs
would know.

I don't remember the exact quote, but in the first couple minutes of the
video, Jobs introduces the talk saying iPhone is going to revolutionize three
industries by combining an iPod, a phone, and internet communication device.

Jobs was fully aware it was going to be huge for those three reasons combined.
Had he not envisioned it was about having the internet in your pocket, he'd
have stopped at it being an iPod that can place phone calls.

------
dare0505
I think "Wanted" should be changed to "Imagined" to better reflect the
content.

With that being said, it's a refreshing article. Most articles on Steve Jobs
focus on how visionary he was, how he was predicting everything etc. This one
is stating that, he was a human after all, just like us, and that the future
is notoriously hard to imagine and predict. Nassim Taleb would agree :)

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bitwize
He didn't want us to use Macs the way we do either. The Mac's spiritual
predecessor, the Lisa, originally came with an office suite and that was it.
No third-party application software could be installed. Eventually,
alternative OSes (including Unix) and an emulation layer allowing Apple to
badge-engineer unsold Lisas as the "Macintosh XL" would change that, but the
original concept was fixed functionality that would prevent users from being
overwhelmed by too many choices.

Steve had a fondness for completely circumscribed ecosystems and "computers as
appliances" which I don't think he ever totally let go of, despite innovation
and market demands showing obvious benefits to users being able to expand the
capabilities of their own devices.

~~~
CharlesW
> _He didn 't want us to use Macs the way we do either. The Mac's spiritual
> predecessor, the Lisa…_

Steve was forced out of the Lisa group more than 2 years before the Lisa
shipped, so it's a stretch to infer a "no third-party applications" intent on
Steve's part based on that.

Also, Lisa Workshop allowed for third-party application development and
shipped alongside Lisa Office System (IIRC). Are you saying that it was
possible to develop applications for the Lisa but not run them? (I honestly
don't know, but that seems unlikely.)

> _Steve had a fondness for completely circumscribed ecosystems and "computers
> as appliances"…_

You may be thinking of Jef Raskin, who originally envisioned Macintosh as a
"computer appliance". Steve's vision for Macintosh was much different than
Jef's, and Apple actively courted third-party developers during its
development.

------
lukifer
It’s interesting to ponder how much of the smartphone ecosystem was an
accidental byproduct of implementation details: namely, the decision to use a
stripped-down desktop OS, rather than a beefed-up iPod OS. Allegedly, the
latter was also in the works as a phone, but it was Scott Forstall’s OS X team
who won the battle internally. Even though the feature set was shipped as
“iPod that makes calls”, the fact that everyone knew there was a full OS under
the hood made the proliferation of apps inevitable.

I suspect we would have gotten to the present-day norm eventually either way;
but, if not for “OS X in your pocket”, the iPhone might have wound up in the
same historic dustbin as the Newton, the Palm, and the Sidekick, a mere
precursor rather than the thin end of a revolutionary wedge.

------
gnicholas
> _He doesn’t dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet
> connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address._

That's because, IIRC, he was doing a dramatic reveal where each set of
features was discussed separately (iPod, cell phone, internet navigator). The
fact that this section came last doesn't mean Jobs thought it was less
important. In fact, it was arguably the most impressive part (iPods already
existed, as did cell phones, but there were no good touch-screen internet-
enabled devices). That's probably why it was last.

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danso
This essay absurdly treats humans and their beliefs as immutable objects.
There is no justifiable reason to think this, even as much as Jobs may have
likened himself to a deity.

------
mckee1
Perhaps Jobs didn't appreciate the full extent to which their product would
transform humanity, but that is not necessarily the same thing as him not
wanting, or opposing, us using our iPhones as much as we do.

I understand the desire for a backlash on smartphones, but their ubiquity is
simply a demonstration of just how much utility we derive from them.

~~~
imgabe
I don't think ubiquity necessarily implies utility. Was the ubiquity of
cigarettes a demonstration of how much utility we derived from them?

------
adam
While the title of this article may be a bit misleading as numerous people
here have reliably pointed out, I think comments so far are missing the
broader point. Cal Newport's focus for awhile now has been on "minimalist" use
of our phones, and how social media, etc. are interrupting/damaging our lives
in numerous ways.

Despite the "cheap" headline and arguments you could make of his narrow
interpretation of Jobs' introduction of the iPhone, Newport's broader points
IMHO should still be recognized and are important to be heard.

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waynecochran
Evidently he didn’t let iPads into the home as far as the kids involved:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-steve-jobs-
never-l...](https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-steve-jobs-never-let-
his-kids-use-ipad-apple-social-media-2017-3)

For some, these gadgets are crack cocaine.

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scarface74
Seeing that by the time the iPhone was introduced, there were already millions
of people tuning out the world with iPods, I doubt that SJ didn’t see this
coming. By the time he passed, the App Store and social media on mobile were
already a big thing.

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weaksauce
The reason Jobs didn’t want to demo the Internet part of the phone was because
it was terribly buggy at the time of the demo and they rehearsed a way to
carefully navigate a few pages in a specific order that wouldn’t crash the
browser.

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lgrapenthin
Jobs didn't focus on, at the time, non-existent features, like the mobile web,
because they didn't exist. The authors interpretation is not well supported

~~~
ceejayoz
WAP was introduced in 1999, and m.example.com (or .mobi ones; introduced in
2005) style sites existed before the iPhone as well for use on Blackberries
and the like.

Things exploded quite a bit post-iPhone, but it's a mistake to say they didn't
exist at all.

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dan_m2k
I call bs. It was a very clever entry to the market with lots of opportunity
for product improvement. 3G chip? Reason to upgrade. App Store? Another.

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CyberDildonics
He thought he could heal his cancer with crystals, let's not hold him up as
some perfect deity.

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AAnAndAndrAndre
"He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives."

He didn´t do it. We did.

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anth_anm
The author knows he didn't die until years after the first iPhone launch?

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k__
He underestimated smartphones, so what?

We all did..

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baxtr
Please stop telling us what Steve wanted or not wanted? He is dead for
Christ’s sake. Let him rest

~~~
melkiaur
For your information, Jesus Christ never wanted us to argue about mobile
phones on the internet.

~~~
baxtr
Depends on the universe I guess.

------
dyeje
So easy to put words in the mouth of someone dead.

------
fipple
LOL at the NYT taking Steve Jobs' marketing tactics as his actual normative
views. News flash: Steve Jobs was the best in the history of capitalism at
"it's not a bug, it's a feature." The iPhone was perfect without 3rd party
apps because it didn't have 3rd party apps! Once there were 3rd party apps, it
was perfect with 3rd party apps. It was perfect with a 3 inch screen because
it had a 3 inch screen. When he increased it then it was perfect then. When it
had a bad radio it wasn't the phone that was imperfect, it was you and your
stupid fucking hand!

Notice how many times Apple has used the motto "the best iStuff since iStuff."
It worked better several years ago, but they always claim their current thing
is the Platonic ideal of its category.

