The Story of the Original iPhone's Development 221
jds91md writes "Today's NY Times delivers a great story of the development of the iPhone by Apple. It focuses on the events during the leadup to Steve Jobs taking the stage with shockingly buggy prototypes and pulling off the show that is now history. 'Only about a hundred iPhones even existed, all of them of varying quality. Some had noticeable gaps between the screen and the plastic edge; others had scuff marks on the screen. And the software that ran the phone was full of bugs. The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.' One of the big problems was the phone's connectivity. The man in charge of the iPhone's radios, Andy Grignon, had to deal with Jobs's anger when rehearsals didn't go well. Grignon said, 'Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued — it happened, but mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, "You are [expletive] up my company," or, "If we fail, it will be because of you." He was just very intense. And you would always feel an inch tall.'"
A testament to engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole story is a great testament to engineers, in that (a) it's incredible they could have made the demo work that well, and (b) Apple actually shipped the thing described in that story just six months later - and it was basically pretty functional and solid.
Even for you Apple Haters out there that have zero interest in reading something like this - well anyone who is an engineer should read it, and if you can't bring yourself to do that at least read the very last paragraph which is fun for everyone.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also a great testament to what an utter fucking prick Jobs was. An effective utter fucking prick, but an utter fucking prick nonetheless.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
seems to work in general. https://www.google.com/search?q=linus+torvalds+fuck [google.com]
Re: (Score:3)
You mean it seems to work in two specific cases. In the general case though the conventional wisdom is that it's an awful way to run projects.
Re: (Score:2)
don't worry. it's benign.
this one is more on point though: https://www.google.com/search?q=linus+torvalds+fuck+-nvidia+-sex+-meme+lkml [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's clear you're a moron. Linus did exactly the same thing about crypto vulnerabilities in the kernel. He ignored a real (if so far theoretical) vulnerability, did his usual "fuck you" routine, and did so by making false claims about the relevant code (they were based on code comments which were no longer accurate.) Now that sounds exactly like covering his ears and screaming.
Gently corrects people, my ass. That was neither gentle nor, in fact, a correction.
And Steve Jobs' job was to make things prett
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Funny)
It's also a great testament to what an utter fucking prick Jobs was. An effective utter fucking prick, but an utter fucking prick nonetheless.
It's worse than that: As Dune tells us 'The Golden Path' was Leto Atreides II's prescient plan to guide the entirely of human evolution in the guise of a terrible half man/half sandworm God-Emperor.
This also explains why Apple began building a massive, ring-shaped, climate controlled headquarters shortly after Jobs 'died'. Earth is too moist for sandworms; so they need a secure environment to house their God-Emperor.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, no modpoints. Else I would have modded this "Insightful."
Re: (Score:2)
Intense Focus is not Pricktitude (Score:5, Interesting)
People who are dicks are dicks no matter what you are doing.
People with intense focus are only dicks if you are getting something wrong.
There is a big difference - and the reason why people were willing to work so hard for jobs where no-one would ever work that hard for a real dick.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine where Blackberry might be today if they had an asshole screaming at their product management people back in 2007.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that both Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have soundproofed offices because they're known for browbeating poorly performing executives at the top of their lungs. It seems to be a common thread among the egotists the run large corporations.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
such a stressful story! My blood pressure was up just reading it. Imagine being caught in SJ's whithering gaze! The scary part is that when he told people "you f'd my company" that was the nice time, and other times he became unglued! Then to have to sit there in the audience, knowing there is nothing you can do! I would have been quaking in my boots.
the interesting thing is it didn't go into too much depth about iOS. in the early years SJ kept insisting to miniaturize OSX, but at some point they obv switched. there must be a story there!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Using an OS tells you nothing about whether one OS is a miniaturized version of another OS.
The UI is not the same thing as the OS. With sufficient motivation you could make a shell on OSX, a shell on Windows, and a shell on Linux/BSD/whatever, which present an essentially identical UI. A somewhat better measure is if you've developed for both OSes, but even they can have a different API set or a converged one (eg. the WINE project or the Unix API implemented in *all* the major OSes including Windows, but
Re: (Score:2)
Well, iOS is miniaturized OS X. In fact, I think when RIM first took apart an iPhone
Re: (Score:2)
Android and desktop Linux are not really that close. Android has an almost entirely different userspace from desktop Linux, because of Google's allergy to GPL and open development. It uses Bionic instead of GNU libc, it uses Dalvik instead of OpenJDK, it uses SurfaceFlinger instead of X or an existing framebuffer library, it uses Binder instead of DBUS, and wakelocks have been a challenging addition to the Linux kernel. Just off the top of my head.
Apple, obviously, has no problem using the same libraries an
Re: A testament to engineers (Score:2)
No, it is still LARGELY based on OS X. It uses the same kernel
(Darwin) and many of the same API's.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the typical response of an abuse enabler. People from all walks of life have repeatedly pointed out that Jobs was an A grade a-hole, yet we have noh8rz10 belittling one of the targets of his abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
how did I belittle? I sympathized with the dude who obviously had a harrowing experience! you're right I'm forgiving SJ his a-hole-ness, because he was a great man. no fanboi-ism, just facts.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:4, Interesting)
Its also a testament about demonstrating something way before it was ready. A specific sequence of events that had to occur in a given order to prevent it crashing? Really? Send your most visible exec out with total crap in his hands?
Couldn't they just wait till it actually worked? Its not like anyone was racing them to market in those days.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
Which if you've been an engineer for more than, say, 10 minutes, is something you've experienced in your career.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you only see Almost ready products in public demos, never flaming disasters carefully masked.
Most engineers worth their salt wouldn't even show pre-alpha products to management.
The thing is, it wasn't a flaming disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
never flaming disasters carefully masked.
It wasn't a flaming disaster though, just a lot of components that all worked pretty well already, but very very unstable - especially in combination.
That is very, very far in the live demo world from a "flaming disaster". Flaming disaster would have been a browser that could only parse simple HTML, mail client that ate emails, phone that failed to dial ever, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, public demos are relatively rare overall. Sure Apple does it, but most companies will have smaller initial demos, either to invitees only or as a dog and pony show to a specific customer. But definitely the idea of showing something off before it even works is common. Usually you've got a snake oil purveyor leading things (from sales department, or a CEO), and if things break badly there's a lot of sleight-of-hand being done to hide the product while it reboots.
Things are rarely flaming disasters b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, you only see Almost ready products in public demos, never flaming disasters carefully masked.
Most engineers worth their salt wouldn't even show pre-alpha products to management.
Sure, you do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_Jp6PxsSQ [youtube.com] Oh...wait. That wasn't carefully masked. It was just a flaming disaster. Carry on.
Re: (Score:2)
If you've been involved in projects that are demonstrated to the fawning public and press when they are still smoke and mirrors I can see why you are posting as AC. But why don't you use your AC status to help protect the public as well as your own ass, and tell us what company it was so we can all avoid them.
Re: (Score:2)
When the prior team deserted their project en-mass you certainly were a clown for accepting the assignment.
Re: (Score:2)
So that's your example of a quality product?
Re: (Score:2)
Which if you've been an engineer for more than, say, 10 minutes, is something you've experienced in your career.
I really hope you are not a bridge engineer!
Re: (Score:2)
I think he's one of those people who still think "software engineering" is related in some way to other actual engineering disciplines.
Re: (Score:2)
Send your most visible exec out with total crap in his hands?
Depends on the exec. Some are completely incapable of doing this - they either panic and push the wrong buttons or fail to gracefully recover when they fumble.
When you are starting off, the goal is to demo the vision, not the product. So it is not only ok, but commonplace to have incomplete/buggy device. But if your execs cannot pull off these kinds of demos, the whole thing is DOA.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Informative)
Android had been in the works since 2005 and probably could have been released on a phone in 2007, but their acquisition by Google probably cost them a year. And at the time, Palm, Microsoft, and Nokia were formidable competitors. In 2007, they had become complacent and failed to update their OSes, but Apple didn't know that at the time.
Yeah, people were "racing them to market", and the initial iPhone was a pretty iffy proposition and pretty limited device.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is yet another example of the differences between Gates and Jobs. Gates went on stage and demo'ed their operating system. Jobs went out with his immaculately rehearsed script of things to do in the only order that they had managed to make work. Win95 blue screened when it hit a bad driver, while IOS (arguably a much more immature product when demonstrated) gave the illusion of being ready for consumers.
Re: (Score:3)
IOS (arguably a much more immature product when demonstrated) gave the illusion of being ready for consumers.
Not really. I distinctly remember Jobs nonchalantly handing off a crashed phone for another one and making it look
like a planned event. He fooled no one. The press called it out, (but of course let it slide), because it was Jobs after all.
Re: (Score:2)
And they didn't learn from their failures, and did it again in 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znxQOPFg2mo [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is yet another example of the differences between Gates and Jobs. Gates went on stage and demo'ed their operating system. Jobs went out with his immaculately rehearsed script of things to do in the only order that they had managed to make work. Win95 blue screened when it hit a bad driver, while IOS (arguably a much more immature product when demonstrated) gave the illusion of being ready for consumers.
Absolutely. This is the difference between geeks/engineers, and people who know how to market things. Geeks and engineers in general don't even like the ability to market. They think it is "bells and Whistles" or "Madison Avenue". I suspect that like most good geeks, Gates went out cold, and tried to demo his products, probably the first time he'd seen them in action. I suspect that (almost certain) that Jobs rehearsed his spiel many times before going out. And if there was a stability problem, what ran before what, he knew it and worked around it.
In the end, when everything worked well, the orchestrated marketing meant nothing othre than it did it's job.
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another example of the differences between Gates and Jobs. Gates went on stage and demo'ed their operating system. Jobs went out with his immaculately rehearsed script of things to do in the only order that they had managed to make work. Win95 blue screened when it hit a bad driver, while IOS (arguably a much more immature product when demonstrated) gave the illusion of being ready for consumers.
Absolutely. This is the difference between geeks/engineers, and people who know how to market things. Geeks and engineers in general don't even like the ability to market. They think it is "bells and Whistles" or "Madison Avenue". I suspect that like most good geeks, Gates went out cold, and tried to demo his products, probably the first time he'd seen them in action.
Haha. People here seem to have forgotten that Microsoft practically invented the term "vaporware" all by themselves. They were undisputed masters in that field. The "Cairo project" arguably existed for the sole purpose of shying customers away from NeXTStep, and was buried as soon as the latter was no longer thought to be a threat. And who remembers WinFS? They probably even shipped some developer previews of that before cancelling it.
In contrast to that, Jobs at Macworld 2007 only promised that Apple would deliver a device 6 months later which would work as could reasonably be inferred from the demo. And they did that. So technically Jobs wasn't even "lying" at that demo, the whole thing can essentially be seen as a somewhat more elaborate slide-show presentation which just happened to include a half-working prototype as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Amusing. First 'Troll' mod that I've had in a while. IIRC my last Troll mod and my last Flamebait was also pointing out the differences between MS/Gates and Apple/Jobs.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Gates wanted to make things useful, Jobs wanted to make them pretty. They both knew their audience, I suppose.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gates wanted to make things useful, Jobs wanted to make them pretty. They both knew their audience, I suppose.
Jobs wanted to make things usable. And he did.
Re: (Score:2)
No, no he did not. I have absolutely no idea how that absurd myth still persists.
Something as simple as copying some music on to an iPod or iPhone is an absolute nightmare. Their gesture suite can only be described as disgraceful. Even the home button is a mess; embarrassingly overloaded with functions which change depending on how and when you press it. It's as unintuitive as it gets.
Sure, the iPhone it seemed simple when it barely did anything. You know, when it didn't have apps, copy/paste, multitas
Re: (Score:2)
Can you do bulk delete easily on the iPhone mail client yet? I wanted to clear a load of spurious notifications from my work iPhone back in 2011 and was told that no-one needed to do that by a load of idiot fanbois and I should be happy to have to delete 6000 emails one by one.
Re: (Score:2)
Gates wanted to make things useful, Jobs wanted to make them pretty. They both knew their audience, I suppose.
By the time the iPhone came out, Gates's/Ballmer's efforts to "make things useful" had culminated in something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQquVbbLgtE [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=928W9niR0G0 [youtube.com]
Nuff said.
Re: (Score:3)
In the initial stages the iPhone was hidden from most Apple employees. Even those that worked specific parts of the software design would not know how it was supposed to come together. To bring all the employees inline with development would inevitably result in the design being leaked before the big announcement. As it stands, rumors of it existed but people only had basic ideas of how it might look and operate.
The final announcement greatly preceded the launch - something that is very rare for Apple
Not very inflexible at all (Score:4, Informative)
But considering how inflexible the first version of the OS was, not impossible.
If you look at the jailbreaking stuff from launch time though, the platform itself was not really inflexible at all. Many of the classes iOS developers know and use today were there at launch. The device itself have a limited set of applications but underneath it really was running a scaled down OSX and using ObjectiveC for applications just as the desktop did...
I totally agree with you on the need for groups to be able to work together being a reason why the announced it so far ahead of launch (comparatively). They got it as far as they could (really farther) with the left hand not being able to know what the right was doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds plausible. I had a friend who was a manager at Apple, unrelated to phones, and at one point they had a bunch of managers come together to do final assembly on one of the subsequent phone models just to keep it a secret a little longer.
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of my final project in a CS class, we had a program that actually worked but didn't have time to compile all the data for it. Instead, we made a quick mock up that responded to specific buttons in a specific order, creating what was essentially a slide show of how it actually worked.
Re: (Score:2)
And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team.
Erm, so what is he saying here? I need to know WHICH expletive to get the sense of the sentence but the morons censored it.
Re: (Score:3)
Why would Apple do a presentation and draw people's attention to the fact that the signal was not good on the day and all the other negatives. Like it or not, Apple was selling the vision of the iPhone. People didn't leave the presentation thinking, "OMG, that first version of the iPhone is bug free". They rather thought the iPhone is a hundred steps ahead of anything they had ever seen, and that the vision was bold, and the product was likely to be really good, which it turned out to be.
if you've only got a highly buggy prototype (Score:2, Interesting)
...perhaps you shouldn't be demoing it to the public yet.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, you are right, what the hell were they thinking? It's too bad they didn't listen to your advice, otherwise they might have been successful. :(
Golden Path (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I have no problem with even totally canned demos, as long as everything works as promised when the product ships. A "premature demo" can still be valuable for demonstrating product concept and eliciting user input. Interest will fall off if the lag between demo and shipping is too long, however.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, the dog and pony show, with super glued, hand-built prototypes and fake UI screens. The real danger is always in management, who must think, "hey, we saw it working last week, why do these eggheads say they need more time now? What's left to do?"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why there are specific kind of demos where you don't want everything going smooth, or at the very least, you make something obviously unfinished. I've gone as far as making my UI uglier for a demo: People thought they were funding UI improvements, when in reality we just needed a whole lot more investment in the backend to support realistic loads effectively. Otherwise, the app would have looked ready to go, but fail miserably when in production.
iPhone (Score:2)
The next chapter in the The Time Traveling Adventures of Reginald Smitherington, Klutz: In Reginald's previous episode he dropped in on Preston Tucker and helped him with the debut of his revolutionary car, mistakenly connecting the fuel line to the distributor and starting a fire.
This time Reginald helps Steve Jobs improve upon his perfectly assembled and functioning mobile phone, by introducing some last minute code, to make the presentation even more spiffy...
The beginning of the end (Score:2)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all [theglobeandmail.com]
shockingly buggy??? (Score:2, Troll)
Jobs got through a long and involved demo without a crash nor even a glitch. Compare this to so many Microsoft presentations, where you know good and damned well they put every bit as much effort into finding a "golden path" for the demo, but it crashes ANYWAY!
Overtime (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Steve didn't work 80 hours per week and took his kids to soccer practice. The engineers, on the other hand, certainly did.
So if you want to change the world and still get the kids to soccer practice, don't be an engineer at Apple.
Re: (Score:3)
Steve didn't work 80 hours per week and took his kids to soccer practice.
Nope - The fact that he put work before family was well-documented. He was a lousy father.
http://www.metroparent.com/Blogs/Views-on-the-News/October-2011/Steve-Jobs-Big-Fail-as-Father/ [metroparent.com]
Re:Overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the real world, where the tradeoffs are real.
iPhone mini (Score:2)
Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s top hardware executive at the time, says there were even long discussions about how big the phone would be. “I was actually pushing to do two sizes — to have a regular iPhone and an iPhone mini like we had with the iPod. I thought one could be a smartphone and one could be a dumber phone. But we never got any traction on the small one, and in order to do one of these projects, you really need to put all your wood behind one arrow.”
Wow, they really need to revisit this idea now. The world has changed since 2007, and Apple now has a lot more money, resources and competition from a range of Android phones, big and small. I personally prefer the "small" 4 inch screens, but I know that most of the market wants gigantic phablets. It made sense back in 2007 to have all the wood behind one arrow, but now they've just got all their eggs in one basket.
Finish up and leave (Score:2)
I know one of the engineers who worked on that. He was a quiet, competent guy, and didn't like being screamed at by Jobs. He quit right after the iPhone shipped.
Guess where I'm reading this (Score:2)
"The story was that Steve wanted a device that he could use to read e-mail while on the toilet — that was the extent of the product spec".
I had no idea I was taking part in such an important use case.
Terminology (Score:5, Informative)
The word "innovation" does not mean "invention." What you're describing, however, does fit the definition of innovation.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Neither does it mean "popularizing".
Sir, you are mistaken. Apple has recently innovated the definition of "innovation". You will kindly conform to the new Apple-approved meaning.
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither does it mean "popularizing".
Palm, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft didn't just invent these technologies, they brought them to market and had very successful products with them.
No. They produced entirely different devices and were (more or less) successful with those. The innovation in the original iPhone wasn't in any of the underlying technologies -- those had all been there before. The innovation of the iPhone was in the overall design, the vertical integration of the touch screen with the new "physical" touch UI and the sensors, the unified co-design of hardware and software and applications and later the app store model and so on. All those things constitute innovations in themselves -- and they have since totally disrupted and recreated the entire smartphone market.
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Informative)
Palm did the same thing before Apple and was very successful with it. Apple did not invent or was the first to succeed with the app store either. The iPhone was simply an evolution from previous platforms.
No. I owned a Palm Pilot. It was a very different device from an iPhone. There was nothing like the app store either. OTOH, all current smartphones, including Android and Windows Phone offerings, aren't very different devices from an iPhone. Even though those devices have developed several unique feature sets and UI paradigms, the basic way the whole package works is fundamentally similar to -- and can be traced back to -- the first iPhone.
Apple has always remained a small player in the smartphone market, so they neither "disrupted" nor "recreated" it.
That's not a valid line of reasoning. You can disrupt and recreate a market without subsequently dominating it for a long time. The available Android and Windows Phone devices are very competitive offerings. Still, as stated above, they're fundamentally similar to the original iPhone in many ways. As an indication you can just look at the way mobile browsers have developed. Until 2007 they were tiny, clunky apps that nobody used. After 2007, everybody scrambled to make their browser work like the iPhone's. There is a reason why e.g. Opera basically pulled their browser from the market and started laboring internally for one or two years. There is a reason why Microsoft essentially terminated their entire mobile OS line, which had been quite successful previously, and started working on a new one. There was a smartphone market before the initial iPhone, and then there was a very different smartphone market after the initial iPhone. That's what constitutes the market "disruption" and "recreation".
Re: (Score:2)
No. I owned a Palm Pilot. It was a very different device from an iPhone. There was nothing like the app store either. OTOH, all current smartphones, including Android and Windows Phone offerings, aren't very different devices from an iPhone. Even though those devices have developed several unique feature sets and UI paradigms, the basic way the whole package works is fundamentally similar to -- and can be traced back to -- the first iPhone.
Why not trace it back further?
The iPhone may have been the first pho
Re: (Score:2)
No. I owned a Palm Pilot. It was a very different device from an iPhone.
Of course... it had a resistive touchscreen. Modern smartphones are capacative touchscreen devices. That is THE difference between smartphones available from the late '90's through late 00's and current-day smartphones. There are plenty of previous examples of things like the app store. Most of the "innovative" UI interactions that people like you credit to Apple are just things that work on capacative touchscreens but not on resistive ones. Have you every tried swipe-based gestures on a resistive touc
Re: (Score:2)
Dynabook. PenPoint.
(And Newton was a failure because it didn't do what Palm or later iPhone did.)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a difference between seeing the forest (a well designed product that people will use) instead of the collection of trees (stand alone features that didn't work well together).
Re: (Score:2)
But that difference didn't exist. All the smartphones at the time had pretty much the same features in the same combinations as the iPhone. A Palm-based phone around the time the iPhone came out already was pretty much like an iPhone: same kind of launcher, same productivity apps, same kind of syncing, music player, online market, dock, sync cable, etc. The main difference between iPhone and the rest was not innovation or combination of features, it was appearance, design, and (a moderate increase in) usabi
Re:give proper credit (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They had low resolution displays and was pretty much an upgraded Palm Pilot with a cell phone built-in and a blackberry like keyboard that made life easier since graffiti required a stylus to input well. I had one. I also had to work with Nokia's offerings. There were absolutely no comparisons between these devices and the very first iPhone. The windows mobile version of the treo was a little nicer, but still had a low resolution display and had very little in common with the iPhone.
There is a reason the smart phone market didn't take off until the introduction of the iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
There were some full touch screen versions, and 320x320 isn't "low resolution" (compared to the iPhone's 320x480). You didn't have to use the stylus, there were touch keyboards, although the hard keyboards were nicer than iPhone for a long time.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:give proper credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Ford didn't invent the car either, but the Model T was certainly innovative and redefined the automotive industry. The same can be said for the iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
The revolution was how they were built so they could be cheap enough for ordinary people to afford them.
Somehow, I don't think comparing the Model T to the iPhone is quite appropriate.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Hey dumbass. They've been dominating the market BY REVENUE for YEARS now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The people who actually created those technologies may feel better at least.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except they weren't really "Apple innovations". Apple did a great job with the design and engineering of the iPhone, and they popularized these ideas and interfaces. But the innovations themselves largely came from Palm, Nokia, and a whole bunch of startups.
In theory, yes, Palm and Nokia could have come up with an iPhone before Apple, but the fact was they didn't.
I have used the Palm V since 2001, and I have been waiting for them to come up with a good PDA phone for years until I finally gave up on them and bought an iPhone instead.
You could have all the great ingredients on your hand, but if you cannot cook up a good dish, you can't say you are a great cook because you "could have" made a great dish, and that other cook who did just copied your ingredients.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the original iphone was made by the Brazilian telephone company. Apple just ripped off the name without doing any research.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Spend some time commuting on I-280 (the Junipero Serra Freeway) and you'll soon realize that it's clogged with people doing 5 mph under the speed limit in the fast lane...
Spend some time on 280 at the right time of day and you'll soon realize that some sections are clogged with people doing 40+ mph under the speed limit in all lanes.
Re: (Score:2)
You must be one of the people doing 5 under in the fast lane, then. Speed up, or get out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
My experience is that everyone is doing >80...
The further you get from SF, or the closer you get to commute time, the less true that is.
I usually use 280 for a small handful of minutes, just enough to get to the 9. When it's moving, though, it's one of the fastest highways in California.
Re:Identifying problem source (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly what I was thinking. Had I been there, my reaction, after the initial shock and horror, would have been, "No, if we fail, it will be because you demanded we demo a product before it was ready." There's pushing people to deliver amazing products in an amazing timeframe, and there's pushing people to deliver a product, finished or not, in an unrealistic timeframe. There's a very fine line between the two, and had they failed, it would have been entirely because Steve crossed that line. Fortunately for everyone involved, he didn't. He knew exactly how far and how hard to push, and he pushed that hard, but no harder.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know whether to dismiss that as a fantasy, or point out maybe it's part of why you weren't there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: The Story of Windows Phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Not my experience. Are you just typing in the garbage you're paid to type in?
Yes, they are.
Social Media Marketing companies like Burson Marsteller, Waggener Edstrom and others have teams posting FUD and moderating in all tech sites on behalf of Apple, Microsoift, Facebook etc.
And you're right:
"Contrary to what you’ve heard, Android is almost impenetrable to malware
Until now, Google hasn’t talked about malware on Android because it did not have the data or analytic platform to back its security claims. But that changed dramatically today when Google’s Android Security chief Adrian Ludwig reported data showing that less than an estimated 0.001% of app installations on Android are able to evade the system’s multi-layered defenses and cause harm to users. Android, built on an open innovation model, has quietly resisted the locked down, total control model spawned by decades of Windows malware. "
http://qz.com/131436/contrary-to-what-youve-heard-android-is-almost-impenetrable-to-malware/ [qz.com]
Of course, Slashdot doen't consider this news bcause it's sponsors haven't paid it to.
Re: (Score:3)
...cunt. I don't know why people revere this workplace bully so much.
He isn't "revered" for his being a "workplace bully", he is revered because of the change he affected -- which is probably more than almost all the other "workplace bullies" combined. There are millions of workplace bullies, but only one of them pulled off the -- in all likelihood -- greatest commercial comeback of the last 50 years, and initiated several breakthrough products in the process. All those attributes make the "workplace bully" attribute proportionally less relevant.
Re: (Score:3)
Steve Jobs pushed his employees hard. He knew they could give him more. They also hardly ever left.
It's too easy to sensationalise the pushy side of the man, but the fact was that he was honest enough to tell them when he thought what they were doing wasn't good enough, maybe too forcefully at times, but honest nonetheless.
Maybe Blackberry would be different if they took the same approach. Could Steve Jobs have been nicer? Yes, but sometimes the CEO needs to be the CEO and not your friend.