In April of 2002, I bought a reconditioned Handspring Visor for $69 and an AirPrime PCS Digital Link Springboard module for $19.95 (down from several hundred bucks initially).
Though based on pen technology, numbers could be dialed by touch, and short of location based services and a gyroscope it had every major application of a modern smartphone including the iPhone.
That's why Job's sanctimony is pretty much bullshit, IMO - the iPhone didn't spring like Athena straight from Job's head. Though it was a significant step forward in the form factor, it was still no more than a step forward.
Phone plans, of course, are another matter, and the changes Jobs initiated in those is far more of a factor in Android's success than the implementation details of a touch screen interface (and also explain why I never used my Handspring phone for mobile data during the two and a half years it was my primary phone, and why it was replaced with a Razor rather than another smartphone).
Well before PalmOS, Apple spent ~100 million dollars developing the Newton which also ended up having most of the major applications of a modern smartphone, including - with the appropriate PCMCIA cards installed in the slot(s) or external devices attached to the serial port - both phone service and location-based services.
The first Palm product was a software program that ran on the Newton; the first PalmOS devices were far less capable than Newton. So if you're just going by the feature set, I think Apple wins this one.
Despite the difficulty I have of foregoing snark in a case where Scully's projects are deemed an Apple win; when it comes to the Newton: Apple != Jobs.
Keep in mind that both pen computing and digital organizers predate the Newton by several years - my sister had a RadioShack PC1 years before the Newton.
The PC1 was a pocketable computer (mostly used as a word processor) but it wasn't a PDA. Scully popularized the term PDA; Newton did quite a lot that presaged the current generation of devices and made it clear what they were good for. Most notably, Newton was one of the first handheld devices to give up the keyboard in exchange for an entirely screen-based UI, which demanded new metaphors and interaction models. The most notable contemporary was the Casio Zoomer, but there really wasn't anything else in the Newton's class at the time.
Here's an amusing blow-by-blow comparison of the Newton to the iPhone:
Apple's Newton was "a win" for Apple in the sense that it proved the viability of the PDA as a category and, like I said, pioneered all these new concepts - doing things more elegantly or impressively in a smaller package than had been done before. I still miss some of the features Newton had and hope one day to get a product that brings them back.
(FWIW, I worked in the Newton Systems Group on the 2.x operating system and wrote the paint program NewtPaint)
The Newton fit easily in a jacket inside pocket, though it was a bit heavy. One of my friends actually had his jacket specially tailored to hang well with a Newton in the pocket. It also kind of fit in a men's front pants pocket, though it depended on the type of pants you like to wear. Didn't fit well in a shirt pocket or a back pants pocket; you did need a Palm Pilot for that.
As someone who has been observing the tech-industry since 2004[1]. This is what I have to say, Android (as a startup) was supposed to be an open-source alternative to the Blackberry and the first Android device (made by HTC) was in a "Qwerty" form-factor.
And the UI was (at the time) plain and among the most uninteresting that I'd ever seen[2].
To explain things clearly:
[1] I've been a gadgeteer from the late 90's and owned a Nokia 5110 when it came out. I've been an early adopter since and had one of the first smartphones (which included a camera) from Nokia, the 7650. I started covering the industry as a freelancer and was with one of the leading print magazines on tech.
[2] In regards to UIs on smartphones-pre iOS, most UIs were palatable and even interesting. The Nokia S60, Symbian UIQ, WM, etc were all different - none of them were copies, and some were just too intuitive once you were used to it (S60). So, when I used the Android emulator (the first device wasn't publicly released) I knew that it would never succeed with a mediocre UI.
And in response to @brudgers, where is Handspring now? Nokia were THE innovators in the smartphone market, where are they now? Nokia had tons of services before any Google service was palatable - NGage, Nokia Store, Nokia Music (comes with Music later on), etc. WAP and career billing existed pre-Apple. And if you're talking about Apple's mobile browser, the Mobile webkit was first ported over to a mobile OS by Nokia themselves (it was open-sourced as well).
Its all about the implementation. When a behemoth like Nokia could be brought down, just because they didn't anticipate Apple's all out assault. Apple had one of the best strategies one's which would've been known to other board members, are you going to say Nokia, MS, and other smartphone companies where complacent when Apple and later Android assaulted them?
Google had a clear direction on how to move forward with their OS, and it wasn't until after the iPhone was launched (and when Schmidt was a board member) did that idea come into place. I'm not accusing Google of stealing Apple's plans but the data is all out for you to parse and make sense of. And since we have many entrepreneurs and businessmen here, let me just say that business plans are as important as the product itself, even more so in a few sectors. I'm not prejudiced, but I make sense of what I can.
Were you around when the iPhone came out? Do you remember the day you first saw it? As it frustrates me people reinventing history. I remember seeing an iPhone for the first time. It was literally a total game changer, revolutionary is a fair word and I use it rarely.
It was years ahead of anything else on the market. The UX was incredible. Everything just worked without incredibly complicated interfaces and clicking a million different options.
You're not looking at the whole product hard enough. The UX is what made it so incredible. The fact it was touch based when everyone said there wasn't a market or that it was too expensive was an added bonus rather than the main feature. But that multi-touch screen enabled Apple to make a truly gorgeous UX. The way it all ties together. The little (and totally un-noticable) UX features that just make it all work so well but you don't notice them any more because they're so ubiquitous because Android copied them all.
Specific examples:
1. The web browser. I remember being incredulous at the time. Nonsense! I said. Viewing normal websites on a mobile? It'll be unusable! Phooey! Then my friend passed me his iPhone and I played with the wonderful pinch and zoom. I switched websites using the on screen keyboard that unobtrusively appeared like magic when I clicked on the address. I was astounded. And totally proved wrong. They were very nascent at the time. People used to have to make websites specifically for browsers and no-one really bothered. My old company did for their browser based application (quite revolutionary at the time) and it was an extremely limited subset of functionality. See your own link, the first one, for how useless the first attempts were. What on earth are those little icons in the top right corner?
And Apple just walked into a market they had no experience with and, Plop! Incredible mobile web browser straight out the gate.
2. The home screen. You could customise it! And move stuff around. And it's accessible without pressing back 20 times! Wow. No longer were you locked into having the media player as option 8 that you had to press 9 buttons to get to. Gah, those old phone screens still make me shudder. They pretty much exposed every setting as a gigantic list on your home screen. And there were so many options. I still feel a little surprised every time I open the iPhone's general settings.
3. The contacts book, no phone before the iPhone had a usable contact book. It was a list. If you were lucky you could search. But that would probably be at least a few button presses on top of the search.
4. Text message interface. Totally different to how other phones did it, conversation based instead of just a list (see your own link for how it used to be done).
5. The email tie-in. A simple UX for emails? Nice little notifications? Push? In a consumer phone? It's not a blackberry? Incredible!
6. The media player. An intuitive interface for playing or manipulating playing songs? And iTunes! Crap as it may be in today's eyes, it was so much better than the crud that came bundled with other phones at the time.
7. The microphone, volume controls and phone answering.
8. The 'silent' mode switch. Faffing around through about 10 actions to turn on silent mode? No more, one tactile feedback switch with the added bonus that you can run your thumb over it in your pocket to see if silent mode is on.
9. The synch just worked. You just plugged it in and it worked. In the 3 or 4 years that the other manufacturers had computer tie-in they'd managed to produce every conceivable piece of rubbish synching software you could imagine. The iPhone was the first phone I saw anyone actually bother to synch with their computer.
10. The wi-fi. It has wifi? No way. And it just works? Not 20 minutes fiddling, it just worked. And it did amazingly smart things like use the wifi for email and browsing when you were near a known network. This. Is. Amazing. The reason it had this incredible feature was because it had a mobile browser that would have caned your mobile data plan which were restrictive to say the least. Other phones didn't have wifi connections.
The list is much, much longer than this. There's just so many little tweaks and incredible modifications they made to how a mobile phone should operate that beggar belief that anyone would claim it's just a 'step', it was a gigantic leap.
Phone manufacturers were total failures when it came to the actual software for their phones. Total and utter failures. They couldn't do it! The UX was always horrific. The iPhone changed that permanently.
It reinvented usable mobile phones. Before that everyone just used a tiny subset of the capabilities because they were so god-damn complicated.
And Android took it all. Copied it. This is what Android looked like when the iPhone came out, it looked like every other phone on the market, a terrible UX, with absolutely no vision:
I've said before, credit where due to the android team for changing direction so fast and so well, but they lifted that OS from Apple, no doubt in my mind.
NB: I'm not an Apple fanboi, I only have an iPhone. But to dismiss the iPhone as a 'step' is absurd to me.
>"Viewing normal websites on a mobile? It'll be unusable!"
What the iPhone changed was data plans and that's what made websites viewable on a mobile phone because the one you get is no longer by necessity a stripped down version - Yes, using a touchscreen provides a better experience, but the browser on my old Nokia with S60v3 is entirely functional for browsing.
I would mention the advantage the standard file system Symbian offers when it comes to moving data back and forth between devices or printing as compared with iTunes or Zune, but anyone who had a PalmOS device would already be familiar with them.
Please don't get me wrong, I remember when the iPhone came out, I tried to figure out how to get a manager's to work with Exchange.
Typical ifanboi response:
1) Completely ignore post being replied to
2) Diatribe of rubbish about how apple invented everything
3) Oh, i'm not a fanboi btw lulz
Honestly, you seem to be selecting the worst examples of dumbphone design and then saying, "Look how great the iphone is cos it isn't the worst at this particular feature". If you're going to criticize people about reinventing history, at least learn some yourself. This list of "Stuff that mattmanser didn't know about Smartphones before the iPhone came along" is almost trollish.
Both Palm and WinMo had most of the features you seem to think first materialized on the iphone: Rows of Apps ie "Home Screen" (WinMo even had widgets, etc), web browsers, contacts, emails, texting, media players, cameras, third party apps, syncing, on screen keyboards, notifications, etc, etc, etc.
If anything apple BLATANTLY copied WinMo, but made it look nicer.
Both Palm and Windows Mobile/Windows CE/PocketPC came out well after the Apple Newton, which already had all those features you list. Okay, maybe not "cameras" so much. But everything else. Not to mention a vibrant third-party developer community generating apps for it.
> If anything apple BLATANTLY copied WinMo, but made it look nicer
Now that is funny! If anything, WinMo could have been held up as a model of what not to do. I mean, even Microsoft has entirely abandoned it, which ought to tell you something...
It's nice to see someone who actually remembers Palm.
It's amazing how many people simply forget all about Palm altogether yet it was the thing to have in the 1996-2004 era.
"It suggests that Apple, which has pledged to be true to Jobs' vision, may try to derail Android in court."
Apple has pledged to be true to Jobs' vision? Really? Because I think we just saw a better-sourced article state that Jobs himself said "Don't ask, 'What would Steve do?'".
In fact, if anything, my big wish for Apple now is that they start cooperating with Google. If FaceTime and iMessage were available on Android, and Google Voice native on iPhone (other than Sprint), they could turn the carriers into dumb pipes. It's time.
>Apple has pledged to be true to Jobs' vision? Really? Because I think we just saw a better-sourced article state that Jobs himself said "Don't ask, 'What would Steve do?'".
I don't think that Jobs was alone in his feelings on Google and Android at Apple, whether it's justified or not. I'm reminded of a Gruber article:
"ERIC SCHMIDT. Zero chance. Schmidt is viewed throughout Apple as a traitor, who perhaps used his knowledge of the iPhone, gleaned while then a member of Apple’s board himself, to give Google’s Android effort a leg up. There is a better chance of Apple choosing its next CEO through a raffle of ten golden tickets hidden inside iPad boxes distributed around the globe than that they’d give the job to Eric Schmidt. Wall Street might accept him but Apple rank-and-file would revolt."
The increase in value to Facetime would not compensate for the loss in value of iOS with it no longer being an iOS exclusive. Facetime is a free service used by Apple to sell Apple devices. It is not an end to itself.
No, if the value of the move to Apple would be at best non-existent and at worst negative, which you've just agreed is a strong possibility, there's little to nothing for Apple in such a move.
Apple does not care about metcalfe's law in fine, their goal is not to convert the world to Facetime and iMessage but to use those to drive users to iOS. Network effects play a role in this, but by letting Google build iMessages and Facetime into Android (if Google was even interested in doing such a thing, which they probably wouldn't) they'd only lower the value proposition of iOS: now you can chat with your facetime-enabled iOS-sporting friends without buying and iOS device, meaning you have one less reason to buy an iOS device.
If you think about it, there shouldn’t be that much of a difference in markup between mobile and desktop, so serve the same shit, and only change the presentation. I think a lot of engineering groups try to over-complicate this, or simply don’t care. One document, one url, different presentation.
I think a lot of mobile versions are done via a 3rd party service. Separate web app, domain, etc. But it should be possible to make the redirection smart enough to send you to your original destination on the mobile site.
No matter what anyone says and the patents involved, no judge in this world will ever ban Android in US or (almost) anywhere else in the world. There are too many manufacturers involved, too many users having phones with the OS, and too many resources spent on this. It's simply too big.
Steve Jobs knew that, and giving how a great PR person he was, this might have been just an attempt to put Google's Android in a bad light (which, in the eyes of the non-technical people, he succeeded).
Also, no matter what anyone says (brudgers, this is for you), without Apple, we wouldn't have the world full of touch-screen phones we have now. Yes, it is "only" a step forward, but remember, there were already touch-screen phones on the market. And their impact was ZERO. It is apple who built a real user-friendly OS, and conceived hardware that would make the device easy to use. And being honest with ourselves, every other mobile OS after that got it's inspiration from the iPhone OS.
Android will be the largest player (in numbers) in the mobile space for a long while because it's simply accessible to everyone. It's Microsoft vs Apple all over again. I sided with Android the day the G1 launched, I never looked back, and I'm not sorry at all. But I will never forget the first iPhone, which started an avalanche.
"This almost sounds like a spiritual leader declaring a jihad on Android as his dying wish"
What the hell? Beyond the fact that this is one small part of a book (not the same as him saying it on video or written by himself on a website), there's no way the average joe is going to have his purchasing decision swayed by the opinions of Steve Jobs. Everyone who would already has (or is planning on procuring) an iPhone.
I'm not sure if you were referring to the author of the book, but this is an authorized biography with interviews of Steve Jobs. I have no idea who the proceeds go to but this was obviously something Steve Jobs wanted to happen.
While I understand Jobs' anger, I also can't help but remember how the Mouse was "stolen" from Xerox and other such tales in Apple's history. It comes across as "it's okay when I do it but not when Google does."
I have seen this banded about the internet too much of late and it's about time it stopped, I mean it's not as if the information is out there, is it? The mouse wasn't invented by Xerox. The concept was invented by Doug Engelbart of SRI in the 1960's and first demoed in 1968 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs). The GUI was around as a concept before PARC existed. Ivan Sutherland is credited as creating the first working GUI with Sketchpad in, released in 1963 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg). You'll notice that the interface ideas found in the Alto and later systems (Star?) by PARC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alto_Neptune_Filemanager.g...) were influenced by those of Engelbart in his demo, or to use your language, "stolen". If you look back further, you'll come across Vannevar Bush, who outlined the majority of what went on to become modern computing in an essay about a conceptual system called 'Memex' in 1945, so I guess using your language, everyone 'stole' from him.
As a footnote, Xerox/PARC were remunerated fairly by Apple with 1 million pre-IPO shares, valued at around $7/share which Xerox later sold for $16 million (~$45 million today).
Finally, making criticisms like that is fine, but at least get the meme right. Apple were said to have "stolen" the GUI concept that Xerox apparently "invented".
I know what the point is, but I'd say that the extent to which their innovations are understated borders on the ridiculous. The only people I ever see really overstating Apple's contributions are those that are refuting the fact.
<rant>We live in amazing times technologically, with amazing gadgets that I could only dreamed of when I was a kid, yet many commenters, with little of their own to crow about, have what can only be described as entitlement issues. The problem seems to be that Apple are now a success, perceived to be abusive by a very small bout incredibly vocal minority and individuals feel the need to knock 'em down a peg or two. Yes, some of their contributions, like many other businesses are overstated (Google didn't invent search and neither did they release Android out of altruism for instance); however the extent that some go to to discredit one of the most influential tech businesses of the last 50 years is churlish.</rant>
Apple has never been credited with anything in the first place, so there is nothing to discredit. Even at their very foundation, Apple stole innovations from the workers at Xerox PARC, and then they went on to perpetuate DRM malfeatures and intellectual property / artificial scarcity, through iTunes, the appstore, etc. For more information see this link:
The difference that Apple has with Google is fundamental. Apple distributes artificially stupid malware and Google distributes free software and intelligent cloud services. In this context, I will take Google and Android over Apple and iOS any day.
"Even at their very foundation, Apple stole innovations from the workers at Xerox PARC" You betray you ignorance with that line alone. The workers at Xerox PARC stole those same ideas from people like Engelbart and Sutherland, at the very least Apple paid for them. They also employed a few PARC alumni too.
For the final time Xerox did not invent the UI _or_ even WIMP, they were contributors; just like Apple and Microsoft are.
As for your unbelievably asinine remark; Google distributes "free software and intelligent cloud services". I'm not one for name calling generally, but how that could be construed for anything other the blind fandroid nonsense is beyond me. You are under the mis apprehension that Google act out of altruism. They don't. The offer their services for free for the purpose of gathering data about you to sell to the highest bidder. The rest of us know that AAPL, MSFT and GOOG are not the paragons of virtue that you clearly seem to think that they are, but some of the absolute bullshit that is being present as fact (like the opinion piece that you link to) is verging on stupefying. The facts are out there. Here is a head start,http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~saul/wiki/uploads/HCIPapers/h..., now go and learn something about the industry you work in.
After the cold war, the military cut off most of its funding to AI research, resulting in the AI winter. Without that source of funding, we have to look for the next best source, which is big corporations. Google is one of the best examples of such a corporation because they deliver AI services to billions of users every day.
Now is google a "paragon of virtue"? Hell no, nor is any institution in capitalism for that matter, however, we should still recognise _allies of virtue_ and in a way I would say that Google is one such example, not only through their support of AI but also through their support of software freedom.
For example, the Android project, lead by Google is an essential part of the free software movement and really the good option on mobile devices. And well Anrdoid 3.0 isn't entirely free, Replicant largely fixes that, and Anrdoid 4.0 largely resolves any of these issues. Apple iOS, on the other hand, isn't even comparable, because it is full of DRM malfeatures.
The workers at Xerox PARC stole those same ideas from people like Engelbart and Sutherland, at the very least Apple paid for them.
The workers at Xerox PARC never "stole" anything, they hired lots of people from the nearby SRI organisation which first released most of the features of the GUI during the mother of all demos.
just like Apple and Microsoft are.
Before, Microsoft and Apple, the GUI was essentially the exclusive business of a few private individuals, and the "contribution" of Microsoft and Apple was to make it into a tool of screwing over millions of people. The thing they "contributed" to is their bank account, not technology.
The offer their services for free for the purpose of gathering data about you to sell to the highest bidder.
Then don't provide Google's services with data you don't want them to have. That's pretty simple. At least Google isn't selling stupid DRM ridden devices like Apple is.
The mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart and 'stolen' by Xerox and then 'stolen' by Apple. Apple's mouse was well designed, compact, cheap, reliable, very dependable and consistent in its function. None of this was true of the two previous mice.
This is the difference when Apple 'steals'. They are inspired by something poorly executed and create something much better than the inspiration.
According to Wikipedia, the first mouse was developed by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute in 1963. Regardless, Xerox was paid in pre-IPO Apple stock, so I don't understand why people try to say Apple stole anything from Xerox.
IIRC, Xerox were paid in exchange for engineer visits on the understanding that Apple would produce some form of GUI. Xerox were sufficiently aggrieved with the result to file a lawsuit against Apple, who were trying to do the same thing to Microsoft at the time. I don't think the Xerox/Apple arrangement is as straightforward as many make out.
Aside from the Android/iOs thing, the other really interesting thing in the article is that Jobs essentially is part of the reason why so many Google services are shutting down.
Not that I disagree with the sentiment behind it, i.e. focus.
Though based on pen technology, numbers could be dialed by touch, and short of location based services and a gyroscope it had every major application of a modern smartphone including the iPhone.
That's why Job's sanctimony is pretty much bullshit, IMO - the iPhone didn't spring like Athena straight from Job's head. Though it was a significant step forward in the form factor, it was still no more than a step forward.
Phone plans, of course, are another matter, and the changes Jobs initiated in those is far more of a factor in Android's success than the implementation details of a touch screen interface (and also explain why I never used my Handspring phone for mobile data during the two and a half years it was my primary phone, and why it was replaced with a Razor rather than another smartphone).
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