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Businesses Iphone Apple Hardware

Apple's iPhone Turns 10 (www.bgr.in) 168

Posted by msmash from the revolutionary dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: "Every once in a while there is a revolutionary product that comes along, that changes everything," that's how Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone 10 years ago. To think about it, the iPhone did not have anything that anyone associated with a smartphone. On top of that, it was expensive, you could not share files over Bluetooth, it did not support 3G, it did not have an expandable storage slot and you needed iTunes for everything. But despite that, and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one. Veteran journalist Steven Levy spoke with Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Marketing at Apple on the occasion.
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Apple's iPhone Turns 10

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  • cult of mac (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:05AM (#53632977) Homepage

    On top of that, it was expensive, you could not share files over Bluetooth, it did not support 3G, it did not have an expandable storage slot and you needed iTunes for everything. But despite that, and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one.

    just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time. the term "cult of mac" became known for a reason

    • Re: cult of mac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by millertym ( 1946872 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:12AM (#53633011)

      I thought the iPhone was a huge gimik when it came out. I was very dismissive of a phone with no tactile keyboard buttons. ... and then I used one for 10 min at lunch one day. My co-worker had bought it that morning. By the time I handed it back I knew it was a better than any cell/smart phone I had used to date. It's configuration options put blackberry's quagmire to shame. It's smoothness in function and even typing on the glass surface was astounding.

      • Re: cult of mac (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:40AM (#53633213)

        This is a very Slashdotty article, denigrating a product that - like it or not, really was transformative - because it came from Apple.

        The iPhone changed cellphones forever, it eliminated the PDA, it ushered in the era of smartphones for the masses who didn't have a business need for one and would have never bought themselves a Blackberry.

        The Model T barely had "anything associated with a car" today other than four wheels and a seat, but what we are seeing here is an argument that the Model T wasn't a big deal at all, and really was a crappy product, and not of any historical importance.

        Only on /.

        • Marketing to the Cult (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The product wasn't transformative. The marketing was transformative and the timing was exceptional.

          The business strategy, though, of making you pay for a product you don't own, was ingenious. Long live the walled garden.

          • Re:Marketing to the Cult (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Goaway ( 82658 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:02AM (#53633365) Homepage

            No, the product was 100% transformative. It was completely different from any that came before it, and it was copied by everyone who came after, because it did what people wanted much better than anything anybody had tried before. This is the very definition of a transformative product, and denying requires blinding yourself intentionally.

            Sure, it had good marketing. But good marketing may get you one sale. A good product is what gets you the second and third, and there have been many second and third sales of iPhones.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by MSG ( 12810 )

              It was completely different from any that came before it

              Well... It was better than PalmOS phones, certainly, but not "completely different." Most of its UI was, let's say, familiar to PalmOS users.

            • No, the product was 100% transformative. It was completely different from any that came before it

              LOL someone wasn't paying attention.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 )

            it had the only full web browser on a phone at the time. all other phones had mobile browsers that sucked even if you compared them to IE 6.1

            it really had no function except to take money from people with money to blow to have a device to kill time during lunch or some other time during the day. then it got apps before android

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by teg ( 97890 )

            The product wasn't transformative. The marketing was transformative and the timing was exceptional.

            The business strategy, though, of making you pay for a product you don't own, was ingenious. Long live the walled garden.

            Take a look at phone designs before and after the iPhone [zdnet.com]. When you can see a clear "before" and "after", it's a transformative product.

            • The product wasn't transformative. The marketing was transformative and the timing was exceptional.

              The business strategy, though, of making you pay for a product you don't own, was ingenious. Long live the walled garden.

              Take a look at phone designs before and after the iPhone [zdnet.com]. When you can see a clear "before" and "after", it's a transformative product.

              Exactly.

          • Re: Marketing to the Cult (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Every phone that came after it was styled and designed to look and act the same. How is that not transformative again?

        • As the other poster says, the market was changing and the iPhone managed to have perfect timing. A few things about the original iPhone:
          • No 3G support. I had been using 3G for over a year when the iPhone came out and only supporting EDGE (which networks had to roll out specially for the iPhone) was a bit crappy.
          • No decent Bluetooth support. I had a Mac when the iPhone came out and I could send SMS and dial my phone directly from the Address Book and get on-screen notifications when my phone rang with my

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            IMO, the price and the lack of 3G were the only problems. The other stuff was just noise. And, of course, the price came down with subsidies, and 3G came in the second hardware rev (which IMO should have been the first). And now that the subsidies are gone, Apple is having trouble with sales again. Apple is, of course, in the best position to take advantage of the lack of subsidies by continuing OS support for existing hardware for much longer than Android makers so that their hardware is perceived as

        • the era of smartphones for the masses

          By "masses" you mean those willing to waste $650+ for a phone?

        • The iPhone changed cellphones forever, it eliminated the PDA, it ushered in the era of smartphones for the masses who didn't have a business need for one and would have never bought themselves a Blackberry.

          The question is where would we be without it? Given that the iPhone predominantly was little more than a continuation of current industry trends (see LG's bridging smartphone with a very large touch screen, icons, and buttons for apps), I don't see the iPhone as having changed anything.

          The App Store model on the other hand changed EVERYTHING. That was the transformative component. Phones were always going to end up being flat pieces of glass as this was nothing more than an attempt to implement what we have

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by b0bby ( 201198 )

        Yes, the first time I used iOS I knew that they had nailed it. Think of the Palms and Blackberries of the time - they were clunky and hard to use, even for a geek. I still prefer Android, but credit where credit's due.

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CrankyFool ( 680025 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:12AM (#53633013)
      I don't know, man. I wasn't a Mac person back when I finally grew tired of all the hacky mp3 player solutions out there, and paid $500 for an iPod that I was HOPING I could make work with my PC back before iTunes was running on Windows. The iPod's form factor and ease of use just ended up making it the best product for me -- enough so that I shoehorned it into a Macless ecosystem and accepted the challenges inherent within.

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:18AM (#53633059)

      On top of that, it was expensive, you could not share files over Bluetooth, it did not support 3G, it did not have an expandable storage slot and you needed iTunes for everything. But despite that, and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one.

      just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time. the term "cult of mac" became known for a reason

      Very true. There are plenty of examples where a better product lost out; generally because the lesser one offered some feature that made it more compelling. VHS beat Beta despite Beta's better picture quality; DVD and VHS beat LaserDiscs despite the latter's better quality. VHS had the advantage of longer recording times, VHS and DVDs had a better selection of movies and you could rent VHS tapes a lot easier than you could a Laserdiscs are just some examples of why an arguably inferior product won out. One challenge that the Phone faces is there is much less of a network effect for phone than a product such as a DVD where once you have a reasonably large installed base a format becomes a standard and others find it tough to compete. A phone, beyond apps, is easily replaced with a different model since internet access, ability to call / text / email is not something that has a network affect; that is why companies like Apple try to build close ecosystems to make it a lot harder to switch. Cloud computing, despite it's being sold as anything anytime anywhere is another way to close an eco system through the use of proprietary security and other protocols that only one manufacturers device can use. Expanding into home control is another way to try to create network effects. If enough manufacturers embrace HomeKit then Apple can control the hub and access to the network (phone/tablet/TV box/computer) while letting others add accessories that tie into the network.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        DVD and VHS beat LaserDiscs despite the latter's better quality.

        LaserDisc did not have better image or sound quality than DVD. LD did eventually support DTS and DD but it was a pretty clever effort and it wasn't on all titles AND because LD players couldn't decode the audio, it was a secondary track that required an external decoder, a rarity at the time. DVD shipped with both bitstream and decoding support for Dolby Digital from the gate so you could hook up with 5.1 analog jacks to your existing sound system. LD did have full bitrate DTS tracks on them (whereas DVD

      • I agree with much of what you said except iPhone's network effect. There is a huge factor in my continuing to use it, which is iMessage, Find My Friends, and iCloud sync. Pity the friend who isn't on iPhone and breaks every text conversation because it separates out the thread into green SMS chat. And being able to stay in sync with family members is huge.

        • I agree with much of what you said except iPhone's network effect. There is a huge factor in my continuing to use it, which is iMessage, Find My Friends, and iCloud sync. Pity the friend who isn't on iPhone and breaks every text conversation because it separates out the thread into green SMS chat. And being able to stay in sync with family members is huge.

          I probaly wasn't clear by what I meant. The iPhone as a phone doesn't have a network effect so Apple has created the infrastructure you mentioned which created the network effect and ties users to the iPhone. The walled grden is the key.

      • just some examples of why an arguably inferior product won out.

        But only so long as you argue on pedantic nitpicky points. In the eyes of the consumer, the ultimate judge, said products aren't arguably inferior.

        • just some examples of why an arguably inferior product won out.

          But only so long as you argue on pedantic nitpicky points. In the eyes of the consumer, the ultimate judge, said products aren't arguably inferior.

          Of course. One persons better is another's meh, and in the end the consumer ultimately decides which product offers the best value and hence is "better." Winning in the marketplace doesn't always mean it has better specs or performance, just that it is more desirable to a broader range of consumers.

    • just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time. the term "cult of mac" became known for a reason

      Just think, we could all be running around with Zunes and Windows phones. And on MS-DOS 50.

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:4, Informative)

      by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:28AM (#53633137)

      you obviously don't remember the "smartphones" of the day. yes, they had those paper features but in real life it was easier not to use them. i remember when android was hyping the bluetooth or NFC file transfer. tried it with my father in law one time and discovered it was useless for anything over tiny text files.

      other than apps the only useful feature the iphone was missing at release was corporate email support. a year later they licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft and with the 3GS it was the end of the blackberry

      • you obviously don't remember the "smartphones" of the day. yes, they had those paper features but in real life it was easier not to use them.

        This.

        I had bought a Windows smartphone shortly before the iPhone came out. Yeah, it did lots of stuff that the iPhone did but it was horrible to use. Basic problem: it had a slide-out querty keyboard, a joystick, a jog wheel, a touchscreen, a toothpick stylus and a set of applications that were optimised for none of those input methods. Apple took the minimalist approach: multitouch + one home button, and everything was designed to work well that way.

        After persisting with the WinPhone for a year or two I

    • i had MP3 players since around 2000 and bought the iPod once it worked with Windows and never looked back. Best MP3 player of the day

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by fred6666 ( 4718031 )

        The iPod was pretty much the only MP3 player on which you couldn't just drop a bunch of MP3 over USB mass storage and listen to them instantly. This (and iTunes) is enough for declaring it the worst MP3 player of all times.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The iPod was pretty much the only MP3 player on which you couldn't just drop a bunch of MP3 over USB mass storage and listen to them instantly. This (and iTunes) is enough for declaring it the worst MP3 player of all times.

          The fact that it became several times more successful that all others combined should give you a hint that this form of simple wasn't what people wanted. Else they would have paid more for an iPod. Maybe it's your opinion that's the worst of all times. Almost everybody seems to think so.

        • yeah, i had those and they sucked. ipod and itunes you could organize your music by artists and whatever and listen to an album or just mix the artist. Then they added playlists making it even better.

          the itunes sync was awesome because it made it easy and fast to add or delete music more than one file at a time

          • except when you already had a collection of music organized and you import to itunes and it screws every manual win amp tag you already set up

            • except when you already had a collection of music organized and you import to itunes and it screws every manual win amp tag you already set up

              So, who cares about WinAmp tags when you're using iTunes as your Librarian?

              And if you're upset because it "reorganized" your files, well then, maybe you should have done a little studying before you just turned it loose on the only copy of your music library, eh? Because it doesn't HAVE to do that. You just TOLD it to.

              • i was fine because you know, backups. but still way back on the first version of itunes for windows i was looking forward to it but it was utter shit

          • iTunes sync is probably the worst possible way to transfer music. It only worked on a single device and required a proprietary software.
            On any alternative MP3 player you could make your directories as you wanted and add or delete music files just as easily, but without iTunes. And you could do it on any PC with a USB port.

        • This (and iTunes) is enough for declaring it the worst MP3 player of all times.

          LOL *cough* PlaysForSure [wikipedia.org] *cough*

          iPods aren't even in the top 10 of anti-consumer MP3 players.

          Disclaimer: my first iPod was a gen 4 Touch and I'd been using Sansa devices flashed with Rockbox before it. I never owned a classic scrollwheel iPod. I sure wanted one, though, because it was far nicer than anything else at the time.

          • Even if a MP3 player supported PlaysForSure, you could still choose not to use that function, isn't it?
            You could still drag and drop MP3 files through the file explorer. The iPod was the exception.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The iPhone could not even reliably make phone calls. I had an iPhone, moved from my Razr. which was also a phone that did not make reliable phone calls. The iPhone did solve a problem that I had with the Razr which is effortlessly synching from my computer so I do not have to reenter data.

      I wonder what issues there were with the iPod, because I never had any. I have a nomad, and paid as much for it with no memory as I did for my iPod mini. On the Nomad it took a Very Long Time, a Pournelle used to say

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        It has to be more than gimmick. MS has been trying to do smart phones since 1996 with Windows CE and so far they have nothing. If people were just looking for gimmicks and integration, MS would have had more that 10% of the market at any one time. Blackberry, which was a good phone, fell very quickly.

        People also like phones that don't BSOD. :-D

        But seriously, Blackberry's problem, and really Windows Phone's problem as well, is a lack of app momentum. Phil Schiller's implication that the iPhone would have be

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:4, Informative)

      by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:45AM (#53633237)

      Firewire was much better than USB of the day. The iPod also functioned as an external hard drive. I remember installing OS X on it and booting off of it when fixing my main drive.

    • I'm glad nobody on earth really pays attention to slashdot. So many toads.

    • "Better" is somewhat subjective. The iPod, IMO, was far better than the competitors, like another poster experienced I used one for five minutes and immediately switched. I don't own any other Apple products, none of them had that sort of impact.

    • On top of that, it was expensive, you could not share files over Bluetooth, it did not support 3G, it did not have an expandable storage slot and you needed iTunes for everything. But despite that, and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one.

      just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time. the term "cult of mac" became known for a reason

      Oh, the memories that have been lost to history...

      Okay, first off, remember that in 2007, iTunes libraries were expansive, encompassing, and well-curated. Virtually everyone had an iPod, which synced with iTunes. DRM had only *just* come off the files they sold, meaning that plenty of users still had hundreds of purchased songs that couldn't play on anything else.

      The iPhone didn't do *lots* of things that contemporary smartphones did...but the iPhone wasn't competing with them. The iPhone was competing with

      • What was sorely needed though, was a phone that did mobile web browsing and didn't suck. Internet Explorer Mobile sucked, horridly. Every attempt it made to lay out a page on a 320x240 screen was basically an exercise in shuffling cards - it never, ever worked right...but miraculously, even it was a step up from the Blackberry browser, which couldn't do anything right. Showing a full website and pinching in and out to navigate it? That really was incredible for the time.

        Opera did mobile browsing right, many

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by teg ( 97890 )

          Opera did mobile browsing right, many years before the iPhone came out, and it was available on multiple platforms.

          "The first version of Opera Mobile Classic was released in 2000 for the Psion Series 7 and NetBook, with a port to the Windows Mobile platform coming in 2004. One of Opera Mobile Classic's major features is the ability to dynamically reformat web pages to better fit the handheld's display using small screen rendering technology. Alternatively, the user may use page zooming for a closer or broader look." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          I used Opera on my Nokia N95. While it was a bit better than the horrible default web browser, Mobile Safari on 3GS was an order of magnitude better. Pages rendered better, and using it didn't feel like torture.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly! When the iPhone came out, I had already been carrying full VGA PDAs for 4 years (at first a Toshiba e800, then a Dell Axim X51v), to watch movies while on the subway, so when I first saw the iPhone up close my first impression was "What kind of shitty resolution is this?" followed by "what do you mean I have to convert my videos through iTunes?".
      It is quite funny when you think that they made Retina such a big deal. If they had started from a semi-decent display, it would not make such a huge diffe

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, 2017 @11:20AM (#53634111)

      just goes to show the best product doesnt always win

      Sure it does - the product that wins in a given category is, implicitly, "the best product" in that category.

      What you mean to say is, "The product I like the best doesn't always win," and that's a horse of a completely different color. It just tells you that you've got requirements and desires that are outside the mainstream for that category.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      (Cr)apple products have only survived through the years because they convinced shallow, narcissistic, self important iDiots to buy them! (Cr)apple has always sold poorly designed, poorly made crap!The last quality product that they sold was the IIE! There have always products that were better, and less expensive than (Cr)apple's.

      Without iDiots, (Cr)apple would have died out and been forgotten long ago!

      • (Cr)apple products have only survived through the years because they convinced shallow, narcissistic, self important iDiots to buy them! (Cr)apple has always sold poorly designed, poorly made crap!The last quality product that they sold was the IIE! There have always products that were better, and less expensive than (Cr)apple's.

        Without iDiots, (Cr)apple would have died out and been forgotten long ago!

        What an intelligent, erudite post.

    • Re:cult of mac (Score:4, Insightful)

      by teg ( 97890 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @11:49AM (#53634439)

      On top of that, it was expensive, you could not share files over Bluetooth, it did not support 3G, it did not have an expandable storage slot and you needed iTunes for everything. But despite that, and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one.

      just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time. the term "cult of mac" became known for a reason

      Actually, the iPhone showed that it was better to do some things well than to everything poorly - to have you features be a check on a long list.

      I had an Nokia N95 [wikipedia.org]. On paper, this is a far more capable device than the iPhone. However, when I switched to an iPhone 3GS it was a massive improvement. Mail worked very well, the browser was usable, text entry was quick and by that time, the AppStore had launched. Far, far better than going around hunting individual apps and updates. They were a lot cheaper too. All of this was an order of magnitude better than the Nokia.

    • just goes to show the best product doesnt always win

      Just goes to show your metric for "best" isn't aligned with the rest of the market's. iPods were the best portable MP3 players: we all took a vote with our wallets and it won. They might not have had highest values for individual specifications, but the total package was better than the competition. The same was true for iPhones. Some competitors were faster, or had higher resolution cameras, or had more storage, but none packaged everything in such a way that millions of people saw it and immediately wante

    • just goes to show the best product doesnt always win - same is true with the ipod, there were better options at the time.

      Of course YMMV and opinions and all but... I have to disgree on this. I had dozens of mp3 players starting with the initial Diamond PMP300, which is usually considered the 2nd commercial mp3 player. This was followed by several more Rio devices, then some no-name stuff that used various memory card technologies.. eventually I had a couple CD-mp3 players and even a Creative Nomad HDD pla

  • Lame (Score:5, Funny)

    by tylersoze ( 789256 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:10AM (#53633001)

    No wireless. Less space than a Nomad . Lame.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Rumour says that engineers at Nokia got their hands on an early model, took it to pieces and couldn't stop laughing, saying that that's no way to make a phone, this will never succeed.

      They stopped laughing pretty soon though.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think it was the executives that said that. Nokia had communicator, which was already a smart phone, without the touchscreen that is. Nokia had N770 internet tablet (2005), it was great, except it missed the phone. that's why i did not buy one. The idiot executives were just that dumb not to allow a touch screen phone. Nokia had the tech way before Apple even thought about it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >Less space than a Nomad

      In all fairness, I rarely need to control more than one starship in battle at a time with my phone, so a fraction of Nomad's space works fine . . .

      hawk

  • ...and to the horror of its rivals, everyone wanted one.

    It's almost as if the people who make these purchasing decisions [amazon.com] are unpredictable.

  • Personality and charisma (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Volanin ( 935080 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:20AM (#53633073)

    Does anybody here frequently watch Apple product launches? Then give it a try and watch the 10 minute video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone. I had never seen that video before. It's such a simple introduction and, nevertheless, with such personality and power... Of course it's just my opinion, but it has humor and it's daring... in a way that it makes the current Apple presentations feel like generic marketing. It's almost a lesson on charisma. Oh boy.

    • Steve Jobs' Apple presentations were always a little bit too slick for my taste. You can find him introducing various NeXT technologies on YouTube though, and those are well worth watching. The same style that you'll recognise from the Apple presentations, just not yet quite as polished. Also, not presenting mainstream consumer products, so much more interesting (of very dated) tech.

    • Does anybody here frequently watch Apple product launches? Then give it a try and watch the 10 minute video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone. I had never seen that video before. It's such a simple introduction and, nevertheless, with such personality and power... Of course it's just my opinion, but it has humor and it's daring... in a way that it makes the current Apple presentations feel like generic marketing. It's almost a lesson on charisma. Oh boy.

      The one on the iPad is even slicker. Jobs does the demos sitting in a typical livingroom chair. Is there a better way to show the most typical use-case?

  • Can folks here be grateful instead of flaming? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blahbooboo ( 839709 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @09:29AM (#53633141)

    So rather than turning this into a flame about how android is better than iOS, how about we focus on how this device clearly changed everything on the mobile space. That without the iPhone and Apple, we would all be likely still be using those awful blackberry devices with mediocre web browsers and apps. Or, even worse, still fully using Flash on the web instead of finally escaping its horrible clutches.

    Cmon Slashdot, let's see mostly positive comments for once, because this device did change everything...

  • Terrible summary (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Windows mobile was atrocious and most "smart" phones only supported 2gb of memory. The 8gb model was miles ahead of the competition. Most devices only had 64 mb of memory built in. They all used a stylus which was easy to lose and impossible to replace. Battery life was less than a day.

    No other touchscreen phone would shut off the screen when you used it. It was horrible. Not to mention windows ce was crap, the smallest fucking start menu I've ever seen. Screens were plastic.

    Blackberry had just released a p

    • Re:Terrible summary (Score:4, Informative)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:28AM (#53633583) Journal

      The real inspiration was marrying a capacitive screen large enough for fingers with a finger-centric (finger-exclusive) OS. That, and "app" pricing at $free-$5 as opposed to the traditional $15-50/app desktop pricing which was carried over to WinMo. I owned several WinMo phones before switching to a 3G(s?) simply due to the effortless touch screen.

  • One Month Later... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    iJustine got her first itemized bill from AT&T and has been with us ever since.

  • Yeah how many phones supported bluetooth file sharing in 2007? NONE. The king of the heap was the blackjack running windows CE of all phones and it sucked horribly. everything was a nightmare and at times you could not answer the phone as the CE phone app would crash silently.

    the iPhone back then destroyed the competition because it was far more reliable than the other offerings that was not a flip phone.

    Sadly today.... I have experienced the "cant answer the damn phone" problem on my iphone 6S. Appl

  • Thanks from an Android user (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iampiti ( 1059688 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:18AM (#53633499)
    As an Android user who doesn't like iOS allow me to say thanks. Thanks for spurring everyone else to make hardware and software better than what we had before.
    Once again, this proves the wonders of competition even if you don't like a specific product.

  • My friend and I made the pilgrimage from Silicon Valley to MacWorld Expo in 2007 to view the first-gen iPhone under a glass dome. That was probably the last great MacWorld Expo before Apple ditched it and it slid into obscurity. Ironically, it would be seven years before my friend and I could afford an iPhone.

    A year later I would be working the Google IT help desk. One of the most popular requests that routinely denied was an iPhone for employee use. IT didn't think the iPhone was secure enough to be on the

  • Selective memory (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hackel ( 10452 )

    It's like nobody remembers that Nokia and Symbian S60 ever existed... Many of us had "smart" phones long before the iPhone, that included a built-in webkit-based browser, music, Google Maps and loads of other installable 3rd-party apps. Obviously that never became as popular as the iPhone, particularly in the States where they were hardly available (I bought mine in the UK), but they certainly existed and were great.

  • Haters Got To Hate (Score:3)

    by Marlin Schwanke ( 3574769 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @04:30PM (#53636829)

    My first smart phone was a Samsung running Android. It was clunky and Samsung abandoned it less than 1 year after it was released. I switched to iPhone after that and loved it. I've looked at the Galaxy S, the Nexus and the HTCs every year or so when it came time to upgrade. I am still on the iPhone and loving it.

    My thanks to Steve and Apple!

    So go ahead and pile on.

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