Origin of the iPhone

rambilly brings us a story from Wired about the origin and development of the iPhone. From the article: "Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, 'We don't have a product yet.' The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. 'It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,' says someone who was in the meeting."

Dupetastic!

While, granted, this article has a much more fitting title than the last, this is a bloody dupe [slashdot.org] from yesterday!

Re:Dupetastic!

Check again... they're two entirely different summaries of the exact same Wired article.

Re:Dupetastic!

Yes... and the GP is wrong because nobody here RTFA. I'm so going to submit this link and put a story on how lemurs eat eagles during the jurrasic period...

Re:

does it explain why the lemurs didn't wait until the lunch period to eat the eagles? Plus, I don't really think they did eat the eagles because didn't they just have a new album?

Compulsory...

Tantrum? Real men throw chairs!

Mobile Development

TFA describes how Jobs and co. designed a great device, and makes the point that traditional mobile phone handset businesses has been stifled and denied the opportunity to innovate by network operators.

It is nice that Apple is innovating, and computing on telephone platforms is advancing.

But progress may still be limited by network operators for the time being because to deploy software or services, providers have to go through the network operators.

And to consume services, consumers must first access the networks through the network operators.

Round 1 to Apple with the iphone. Round 2 is software and services.

Can innovation in software and services flourish despite network operators trying to gatekeep and tax all revenue opportunities whether they understand them or not?

Re:Mobile Development

But progress may still be limited by network operators for the time being because to deploy software or services, providers have to go through the network operators.

I don't believe this is a risk, at least everywhere except the US. I have a sybian phone, I can install whatever I like on it, without going through the teleco's network. Plenty of applications use web access on the phone just like apps on a regular PC - things like web browsers, chat apps, SSH, youtube, google maps, etc etc. I've even seen a web server for my phone. I've seen VoIP clients for my phone.

The teleco is just an ISP. We stil have network neutrality, and thats not likely to change. Yes, my teleco has their own lame walled garden of websites that you can browse for free, and download wallpapers and ringtones for an outrageous price - but there is nothing stopping customers (except stupidity) from going to a regular website and downloading the ringtones, wallpapers, 3rd party apps and whatever.

Re:

That excuse always got me as well. While I have my beefs with windows mobile, it's been around for ages and is far more open than the iphone. Not only can I write for it in pretty much any language I want, I can even use most of the same toolkits I'd use f

repeating lies

and makes the point that traditional mobile phone handset businesses has been stifled and denied the opportunity to innovate by network operators.

In fact, several major US carriers (AT&T, Cingular, T-Mobile, probably others) have had GSM systems for ye

Origin of the iPhone?

You should see the origin of the original article posted yesterday. ./ [slashdot.org]

Boom

FTFA : This 4.8-ounce sliver of glass and aluminum is an explosive device that has forever changed the mobile-phone business

What an appropriate metaphor to refer to the success of a product that is powered by a lithium-ion battery.

Bullshit!

It fell out of the sky, accompanied by a host of angels. Everyone knows that.

Then, hovering in the air, surrounded by a wreath of misty light and cherubim, it received it's first call from God who delivered the three prophecies of Cupertina.

The first was a vision of Hell, which looked like an AT&T service agreement and 900 page bill.

The second was how to save (switch) souls from the clutches of Vista and delivered by the Virgin Mary herself in the guise of Ellen Feiss.

The third is held under tight guard by high ranking members of the Huckabee presidential campaign, and is to be revealed on the first New Moon after the current Pope dies.

So let it be written. So let it be dumb.

I hate bosses like that

The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. 'It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,' says someone who was in the meeting."

The only reason to fear your boss is that your boss can effectively end your livelihood or career. Lauding power over people like that, throwing tantrums, and scaring your employees by staring them down or through false calm just makes me very happy I've never worked for such people. I've had some excellent bosses who've produced some excellent results and none of them have ruled by fear. There's one I remember who got accolades on retiring this year and all anyone could ever say about him was that he was calm and an absolute gentleman under pressure. In contrast when I read about Jobs and Gates I just think "goes to show money won't buy manners".

As for the iPhone can't say I understand what the fuss about this product is. Last time I participated in a discussion about it someone was rabbiting on about hacks to do video, as if video were an advanced feature for a modern phone. Please!

Re:I hate bosses like that

Lauding power over people like that, throwing tantrums, and scaring your employees by staring them down or through false calm just makes me very happy I've never worked for such people.

This was about the first thing that struck me when I read the article - it really doesn't sound like a good working environment to me.

Also, I suspect working under that kind of pressure is going to significantly increase the number of silly mistakes being made - not great for the stability of the product.

As for the iPhone can't say I understand what the fuss about this product is. Last time I participated in a discussion about it someone was rabbiting on about hacks to do video, as if video were an advanced feature for a modern phone. Please!

I have still to work out what the iPhone's target market is. It isn't a smartphone - it's lacking in too many features that smartphone users expect from their phones (such as being able to run third party software, using the phone to connect their notebook to the internet, etc), yet it is priced up there with the smartphones (more expensive than many too, and most of the smartphones can do 3G).

Sure, the iPhone's UI is supposed to be excellent, but what's the good in a nice UI if the phone is lacking the the features the target market needs?

Re:

"but what's the good in a nice UI if the phone is lacking the the features the target market needs?"

first, it's NOT targeting the smart-phone market, it's targeting the consumer market. BIG DIFFERENCE.

not that it matters now anyway. last I heard it had a 3

Re:

first, it's NOT targeting the smart-phone market, it's targeting the consumer market. BIG DIFFERENCE.

I'm sorry, I can't believe that you can consider an iPhone to be targetting what you call the "consumer" market (as if smart-phones weren't aimed at consum

Re:

It should be pointed out that the people who actually know Jobs tend to disagree with this public notion of him as a mercurial asshat.

As for your comment on the iPhone, you don't understand what the fuss is precisely because you think that more features ma

iPhone is just another word for vendor lock-in

Jobs and his crew have given us a beautiful device but an ugly product. It is completely locked into its two vendors, and is not a good value.

I hate vendor lock-in. I hate being told how I can use something I bought. It's mine. I paid for it. I've earned the right to control it.

If a vendor wants my business, he needs to EARN it.

The article is good, it just fails to mention

one tiny little bit.

THE COMPETITION

When the article talks about all the things they needed to work out how the phone connects to networks and how the brain gets microwaved (or not) it fails to mention, that this is only news to Apple, not all the other mobile phone manufacturers of the world. Especially when the article talks about the phone being light years ahead it completely resolves into pure Apple fanboy talk.

Those are just three examples of phones that you could compare to the Iphone:
http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/ke850.jhtml [lge.com]
http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.htm [htc.com]
http://uk.samsungmobile.com/mobile/SGH-F700 [samsungmobile.com]

I have one just like the last Samsung model. Mine also has WLan and, like the Samsung, it has a full sized keyboard. Nokia is not even on that list. All of the phone makers have a wide variaty of phones to fit every customers preferred style. Candy bar being the best liked. Many have important features that the Iphone is lacking. Like UMTS support to get decent speed for surfing whe web. Opera build a decent web browser complete with a proxy that "refits" webpages so they look good on a small screen years ago. It is written in Java and works on many phones.

The mobile phone market has enough players that the competition actually works (not like the OS market for PCs). Of those three phones up the all of them use a different OS for example. The HTC model even uses Microsoft Mobile, an OS that sucks less and less with each version, because they face a steep competition by Symbian. And Google just joined.

There are just two things that were new with the IPhone. First was the touchscreen that you can operate on with more than one finger. A feature that is pretty cool and was therefore swiftly copied by everyone else.

The second thing is the Apple marketing. The only thing right now that makes Apple stand out. That and their tie in with Itunes. Itunes has such a large market share, it almost became a monopoly. And now they try to extend that power to other products and markets. Sounds familiar? Another reason why the IPod-ITunes connection works so good.

And that brings us to the last little thing which the article good completely right. Back in 2002 (I would say even earlier, but the article says that was when Jobs woke up to that fact) it became clear that phones will aquire more and more memory and computing power, just like the regular PC. Some people prefer to have funtions seperate on different devices. They like their music player, phone and PDA, or just one of them. Other people like to have everything in one device. And Jobs/Apple wanted to sell Ipods to those people as well. So the Ipod needed to become a phone and a PDA.

And it did. Ipod touch is a PDA and the Iphone is a smartphone.

Re:

its hilarious slashdot has a script to tag when a reply is a duplicate, but no script to stop duplicate stories on the front page.

Re:dupe

it's really funny, Slashdot has a script to tag reply duplicates, but not duplicates articles on the front page.

Re:"Dupe", my arse!!

Where's Occam's razor when you need it, folks?

right next to your tinfoil hat?

Well, if you think that my straightforward and obvious explanation of the reposts as basic commercial pragmatism (and not conspiratorial evil) is implausible, then so be it.

Obviously, it's more reasonable to believe that the editors remain in their jobs despite being so mentally incompetent that their keyboards should have short-circuited through filling up with drool, and that Slashdot keeps itself afloat financially through the generosity of the Magical Website Fairies...

Re:

Which is all fine and good, but the iPhone is NOT A SMARTPHONE. At ALL.

It has NONE of the hallmarks of a traditional smartphone.

"Most devices considered smartphones today use an identifiable operating system, often with the ability to add applications (e.g

Re:06-12-17 status of mobile os market share

* Symbian is huge everywhere besides North America, but obviously has the most to lose with the iPhone being released around the world next year. Don't expect Symbian to post these numbers on their website as they have in the past.

The reception of the IPhone in the European key markets (UK, Germany, France) has been lukewarm at best. I'm not saying that Apple may not be a threat to Symbian in Europe in the future, but for the time being they're far from it.

* Apple is poised to be the number one US Smartphone vendor next year if trends keep up.

I'd wager that this is due to a fact of the abyssimal state of the US handset market. It isn't helped by the carriers who bolt down and cripple the handsets to borderline useless.

Apple will have a much more difficult time in Europe (let alone Japan) with the iPhone for a variety of reasons.

Re:It really is the CEO

But its true. Consider...if the iphone had tanked, there is a good chance that not only Jobs would be out of a Job but that Apple could be out of luck as well. The CEO can take all the glory but they also take all the blame.