- cross-posted to:
- discuss@discuss.online
- cross-posted to:
- discuss@discuss.online
For better or worse the iPhone hit the market today 16 years ago changing the world forever.
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The release of the iPhone and iPod touch was such a special time for me. The jailbreaking scene was just getting started and it started my life long fascination with tinkering with technology.
Same. Cydia app store was a special kind of source of wonder
Refreshing sources will always be permanently engrained in my vision as if I was looking directly into the sun.
I have mixed feelings about the iPhone. On one hand, the device itself was very sleek for the time and its touch-driven, easy-to-use interface was a revelation for 2007. On the other hand, it was the harbinger of the locked-down, walled-garden hellscape that is the modern tech industry, and its success paved the way for horrors like Windows 8/10/11 and the modern Mac OS which gets very testy if you try running app that hasn’t been notarised by Apple.
And not necessarily in good ways. Hardware keyboards, replaceable batteries, extensible memory, analog audio interface, function/multimedia keys, better battery lifespan (not traded away chasing always thinner designs), customizability and diversity in general were important as features and traits sacrificed for no good reason.
On this day in 2007 smartphones took a nosedive in functionality that they took years to recover from. The first iPhone was especially bad, by modern standards it wasn’t even a smartphone, it was a feature phone with a touchscreen. And the discourse was horrible, to the point where people still think the iPhone changed the market. It didn’t, it wasn’t the first phone of its type and it was rushed to release to beat out other smartphones that would have otherwise eaten Apple’s lunch. I had a Nokia E70 in 2007, a time when the culture around using Apple products was even more elitist than it is today, and it was beyond annoying to be told shit like “well you don’t really need to be able to copy and paste text, or record video, or record voice notes, or install third-party apps, that’s all just bloat” by brand loyalists who really needed me to know why my phone was actually worse than an iPhone for being able to do those things. If we’re going to celebrate the iPhone for innovating and being a decent product, I agree, but that didn’t happen till the 3GS came out.
I’m going to disagree with basically everything you just said. It reads like someone who simply doesn’t like Apple. Brand standing if you will.
You need to sharpen your reading comprehension skills, I don’t have any problem with Apple and their products are fine. The 1st and 2nd get iPhones were less functional than the devices they purported to supplant by a wide margin, and the 3GS was the first actually good device they made. That’s all right there in the text, you just have to look with your eyeballs and put the words through the critical thinking part of your brain instead of the emotional reaction part. Even in 2007 it was laughable that you couldn’t connect to WiFi with a purported smart device. Its feature base sucked ass till the 3GS, and now they’re fine; the only reason I don’t use an iPhone is because I prefer auditable FOSS, hence I use an Android device with an AOSP-based ROM and no Gplay Services. If it wasn’t for that, the iPhone would be a fine alternative.
I stopped reading at >You need to sharpen your reading comprehension skills
No need for insulting others.
It wasn’t an insult, I was being exceptionally indulgent by telling you where you went wrong in horrifically missing my point instead of issuing well-deserved insults: you weren’t paying attention to what I was actually saying. I’m not surprised you stopped reading there though, people like you always plug their ears when they think they’re at risk of being proven wrong. You have a bright future in the senior leadership of the GOP if you ever want to take it.
You’re continuing to insult and be condescending. I was definitely correct.
Be nice.
I’m not surprised you stopped reading there though, people like you always plug their ears when they think they’re at risk of being proven wrong. You have a bright future in the senior leadership of the GOP if you ever want to take it.
So you respond to an accusation of insulting them by going “I’m not insulting” and then making another insult?
You seem to have a different remembered version of history. They very first iPhone had Wifi, and could do loads of things other devices couldn’t, like play video, browse the web using a real full browser, and IMO way better typing than any physical keyboard.
You’re acting like iPhone’s lack of an App store on day one put it at a disadvantage, but there weren’t exactly a lot of other options. The app store was released only a year later, and you could do loads from the browser before that.
You claimed the iPhone didn’t change the market, but it did.
I don’t think any competitors would have eaten Apple’s lunch if the iPhone launched 6 months later. They may have had more features out of the box, but it took years for anyone else to catch up to the iPhone’s UX and build quality. Features like copy+paste didn’t matter as much as having YouTube anywhere you go on a 3.5" screen and a mobile web browsing experience that wasn’t cancer.
All one needs to do is look at the rapid u-turn Android took in design after the iPhone launched to see how much of an impact it had. Before the iPhone, Android phones were going to look like Blackberries.
The first few iPhones were definitely limited in their functionality compared to other smartphones of the time - features like voice memos and third-party apps took a while to reach the iPhone OS, and the first-generation iPhone didn’t support 3G networks. Where Apple succeeded was in their UX - the iPhone’s ease-of-use and slick presentation combined with its touch-driven interface on what was, for the time, a huge display.
And it, thankfully, changed the trajectory of the entire industry. Phones were TERRIBLE before the competition picked up.
The industry was terrible but there were lots of good phones out there. The Samsung BlackJack was a pretty awesome device, and HTC was making some pretty compelling devices for Windows Mobile. Then the BlackBerry, of course, was a great device in a lot of ways too; very functional given the limitations of a hardware keyboard.
The smartphone was a disaster. We shouldn’t be connected to the Internet constantly.
Written from my smartphone.
Some of us remember one of the first smartphones, the VisorPhone introduced in late 2000. Consisted of a Visor (basically a Palm Pilot knockoff by Handspring) that had a Springboard slot that you could slide a phone attachment into. I have fond memories of using it to bid on an AOL auction while driving down the highway with my ex-wife yelling at me that we were going to be killed…
Truly a product ahead of its time.
And I was the only person in the office that day because everybody else was standing in line to buy an iDoohickey.
I remember the internet at large before the iPhone. And I’ve seen how it’s changed since. I’m not saying the iPhone was the catalyst but it sure seems like a clear point in history when things started to change because any idiot could get on the internet now
Anybody remember the really awful phones that existed right before this? I had a “Verizon” brand phone that had the worst precursor to modern GPS on it. Made being a delivery driver very challenging as it would die and the maps were not accurate.
Would not recommend
I still look back fondly on my Samsung BlackJack; that phone was fantastic. I still have my HTC Tilt 2 (that was the ATT branded name for it; I can’t remember what HTC called it) and it still works.
There were lots of good/cool phones before the iPhone.
I’ll fondly remember my Blackberry Pearl for all my days.
Huge props for all the UX improvements they kickstarted. reminisces in Windows Mobile 5
I still miss Windows Mobile 5
