
The inventor of Apple iOS user interfaces - kbumsik
https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Bas+Ording
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valuearb
The proximity sensor was the key that made the iPhone work. When people say
some other company invented the touchscreen smart phone first, I like to ask,
did it have a proximity sensor?

~~~
adambrenecki
You could say the same about the use of a capacitative display on glass rather
than a resistive screen you operate with a stylus, or the high (for 2007)
pixel density, or the smooth (for 2007) UI and animations, or inertial drag-
to-scroll, or a whole bunch of other things the iPhone did first to make a
touchscreen smart phone pleasant and enjoyable to use. I know that when I
first used the OG iPhone, drag-to-scroll was the first thing that really felt
like magic to me.

In reality, it's the combination of all those things and more that made the
iPhone work, made it more appealing than anything Palm, RIM or Danger made.
Just adding a proximity sensor, or one of the other things to that list, to a
Palm Treo wouldn't have made it an iPhone.

