

How former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold could have created the iPhone - Brajeshwar
http://www.geekwire.com/2012/how-nathan-myhrvold-almost-invented-the-iphone/

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shalmanese
I don't think anyone's ever disputed that Nathan _wasn't_ a geeky genius
polymath. I mean, he studied physics under Stephen Hawking and was the CTO of
Microsoft. The claim is that he's a geeky genius polymath who is _also_ a
patent troll.

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arn
Of course, The technology wasn't good enough 20 years ago. They could have
made it, but it would have sucked. Apple's success was making an iPhone right
when a iPhone became possible due to the confluence of technology.

When the iPhone was pre announced, I remember hearing that some from Palm
didn't believe apple could make it at the claimed battery life.

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almost
The iPhone didn't invent any of that. Lots of people, including Microsoft, did
in fact build things as close to that as to the iPhone for years before. It's
just that they lacked a certain something.

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rbanffy
That _something_ would be making the user experience "smooth". I had an
assortment of PalmOS devices, played with WinMo devices and settled on a Sony
Ericsson P-800 which was my main phone when the iPhone was launched. I could
anything an iPhone could do, but I didn't have transitions, scroll inertia and
drag to scroll. The P-800 was good, but the iPhone was great.

It's very easy to assemble a set of functionalities. It's not easy to make it
fun to use.

That's what Apple did.

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almost
Exactly. That's why it's silly to talk about iPhone as an "idea" that others
could have had before. It's a Product, not an Idea.

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jmount
He may or may not of thought of it, but there is a lot of work between that
and "creating."

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tsunamifury
Could have but didn't.

Implementation > Ideas

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protomyth
...and if General Magic's software wasn't buggy, they might have done it.

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joshu
was it buggy or just insanely expensive?

(I actually bought one off ebay for the Shelf of Dreams at my office. they are
interesting to play with.)

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protomyth
It was pretty buggy - here is a link to one account:
<http://www.grosen.dk/jp/Diary_of_a_Disaster.html>

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joshu
Ha, strange to see a friend in that article.

Also, the Tony mentioned went on to do the iPod and the Nest.

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othermaciej
If Nathan Myhrvold had invented the iPhone, he would have invented the iPhone.

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angryasian
its funny how people want to think that the iphone was the first smartphone.
Palm, Blackberry, and Nokia offered several smartphones and touch devices. The
biggest difference was multitouch, capacitive screen and convincing people to
buy one.

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gnaffle
I think the biggest difference was that it was the first smartphone that was
easy to use. That convinced regular people to start buying smartphones (and
use smartphone features).

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ktizo
I've invented the beer powered helicopter. It's great. It's a helicopter and
it runs on beer. I've a cool drawing of it that works, in the drawing.

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aiscott
Oh yeah? Well as soon as Steve Jobs popped out of his mom, he cried out
iPhone!

So there.

