Steve Jobs said on stage at the iPhone launch that the killer app was the phone app. IMO that was wrong — the killer app was Google Maps, back when GPS navigation devices used to cost $200+. This made the economic value of the iPhone a lot more solid and subsequently destroyed the entire device category.
The killer feature was the multitouch interface and removal of the keyboard. The same was with Macintosh, they removed the focus from the keyboard to the mouse. It is much easier to know what to do when you have several buttons on the screen instead of generic keyboard with many keys. I remember Steve Jobs emphasized this during the iPhone introduction event.
Maybe in subsequent phones but the initial iPhone didn't even have GPS, only WiFi triangulation which worked only so-so and only in cities (with well... WiFi).
I disagree. I'd put Google Maps on #2. #1 was solidly the camera app, and the various apps (remember Burbn? [0]) that allowed the user to modify, post online, etc.
In all fairness, Ballmer seemed to be right back then - the iPhone 1 had tons of problems with very little utility, and outside of fanboy circles was considered more of a joke. Not only was it ridiculously expensive, an unproven concept at the time and married to specific cell phone companies, battery life also was abysmal (they said it was up to a day, but from memory, people had to load their phones every four to six hours if they were doing anything with it. Compare that to the average phone back in 2007, which boasted battery times measured in days (weeks in case of Nokia)).
It only really got actually general-public traction after they dropped the lock-in to specific mobile providers and proved that screen typing was feasible.
It was 2G when Europe has been 3G for a while. No copy and paste anywhere, but that wasn't probably a big problem (can't remember.) It was more of a fashion / luxury statement than a useful phone. The incredibly large screen would be very useful for web browsing, but 2G... Remember, no apps on the first ìPhone.
Edit: can't remember this too but maybe its 2 Mpx camera was a great one in 2007 (for a phone.) After all the view finder was unprecedented in size and it had wifi to download (or usb through iTunes?). No video recording, no selfie camera.
It also had abysmal support for actual "phone" features... the showstoppers I remember were that it didn't support MMS--so no group text messages, which definitely made it feel like a "joke" given how many people I know relied on text messages (and no photos, though the phone I was using at the time didn't support that either)--and it didn't support any kind of ring tone groups, both of which being features that essentially all other competing phones (including Nokia brick phones) had supported for a long time. And that it didn't come with even a single game--even something as silly or stupid as snake--with no capability of installing a game felt somewhat ridiculously "Apple".
That’s not my memory of it at all. I remember it feeling like something from the future. The massive screen, the accelerometer, the light and proximity sensors and the overall slickness of the UI were really clearly a step change.
I didn’t quite realise at the time that it was a whole new device category that would essentially eliminate all other personal electronics but I remember it being clear that this was more than just another gadget, definitely not a joke!
Agree. It wasn’t really until around the iPhone 4 that the iPhone seemed to find its stride, which was released at least three years after this interview. Before that it’d be hard to argue it had greater utility than other high-end smartphones of the day.
But what Jobs and Apple had was a longterm vision… And exceptional marketing.
Steve Jobs greatest iPhone achievement was in getting Stan Sigman, CEO of Cingular Wireless, to upgrade his network to be equal to the iPhones demands. Prior that that, the tail (carriers) wagged the dog (phone manufacturers).
It's the similar thing with a lot of online business:music, videos , movies or ride sharing. First it's illegal and then someone big enough does it and it's a great business. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, Uber etc...
Technologically certainly fairly interesting but the real roadblock was regulations and contracts and conflicts of interest.
I’m not going to deny that the iPhone was a successful product but what people often forget is that the world was already shifting that way.
Feature phones could already do what the iPhone did (and in some cases even more). Multi-touch devices were available before the iPhone. PDAs had also been about for years and did everything the iPhone could do and more. And Android wasn’t far behind the iPhone and also improved upon the original iPhone.
In fact the original iPhone wasn’t even that good compared to the competition. It was lacking a lot of features people considered “must haves”. Native applications (everything was web apps originally), copy/paste, the ability to background applications, etc. And Ballmers point about the lack of a hardware keyboard was absolutely right for that era.
Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do. And so people often credit the iPhone as being uniquely revolutionary. It certainly was industry changing but it wasn’t singularly responsible for that change.
I say this as an iPhone user with an Apple Watch and other Apple hardware. So I do buy into the Apple ecosystem. But I’m also an old fart who has lived long enough to have first hand experience, both as a user and as a software engineer, pre and post the iPhone.
The iPhone was/is a good product, but I think mass indoor plumbing and the washing machine along with many other inventions ranks higher than the iPhone.
No matter what your opinion of Apple [and mine is pretty low!] it's churlish to deny this.
Yes, people wil point out that Phone X had a touchscreen, Phone Y had a browser, Phone Z had something else. But the iPhone was the first phone to bring them all together in one package.
I used to run an Apple user forum way back before the iPhone was released, when all we had were the occasional rumour that Apple 'might be' thinking of bringing out a phone.
Smartphones are so ubiquitous now that I reckon people forget just how much excited anticipation there was at the prospect that Apple would do for the phone what they'd recently done for computers [remember how revolutionary the coloured iMacs seemed at the time?] and portable music [the iPod]. Back then no-one was enthusiastic about their phones. They were just some utilitarian gadget you carried, like a wallet, a pen or your car keys and there was an almost messianic belief that, if Apple brought out a phone it would be an equally miraculous device.
The launch of the iPhone actually kick-started [for better or worse] the promotion of the formerly humble phone to the ranks of 'gadgets you dreamt of owning'
That's like a funniest thing I read all day, assuming you are being serious. Was an iPhone revolutionary in terms of smartphones? Sure. But calling it a greatest invention in human history, within 100 years of literally thousands of other groundbreaking inventions, is just hilarious.
IMHO, it was not so much as iPhone won, it's more like all other phone companies lost.
Nobody innovated, nobody focused on the developer or bothered with creating a platform for developers although developers were asking for it. Sony, Nokia, Ericsson had big fan bases.
There were any number of customizations that people all over the world created for them. But those phone companies didn't care.
Each year, all these phone companies would come out with new form factors to keep their fan bases hooked. That's it. No standardization, no nothing.
They all lost. And deservedly so. And we were left with Google cannibalizing open-source to create Android. Even then, and now, companies only accepted Android because they saw the rise of iPhone. It was a threat. They had to scramble to get something together.
Everyone else just gave up. Even now, all I hear is, "It's not an easy task to create a new phone because you have to create everything from the ground up". It's this attitude which has been the death of mobile communication.
Instead of having something that everyone could use and build upon, we're left with brittle pieces of proprietary software, completely at the mercy of two behemoths who call all the shots.
The PC revolution happened but nobody learned anything from it.
I very much agree. Ironically the only relevant 3rd option who truly felt like they were trying to innovate was Microsoft+Nokia (the real Nokia) with Windows Phone.
But failures to market and encourage adoption, and perhaps staining it with the “windows” brand, just led it down the path of being forgotten about by developers and so it withered and died.
In his defense, the main objections he has are the price, the lack of a physical keyboard, and the fact that Apple had never sold a phone before. In hindsight those seem funny, but in 2007 you would have heard those same talking points everywhere.
If only we all had decided collectively that 500$ really was too much for a phone. No it’s like no one even checks the price tag because their carrier is slowly milking it out of them instead.
It might've seem funny to those that hadn't seen the future in 2002.
I had a SonyEricsson p900 (The p800, p900 and p910 series was released from 2002-2005) and it had a numpad for quick dialling, but for "smart" usage you really only used the touchscreen that covered most of the front real-estate (and a dial-knob for navigation since they hadn't figured out how to make UI's like Apple did later).
By 2006 however though I was looking to upgrade but SE chickened out and released successors (P990,M600,W950) that _decreased_ touch-screen realestate in favour of num/keypads on the front. It's really sad that they had everything in their hands but fubbed out totally.
But by 2007 the time was definetly right for the iPhone, disappointed by SE I began looking around and there was some "open" phone with touchscreen as well as that LG Prada. I even made a sketch of an ideal device a few weeks before Jobs came on screen.
He might be laughing on screen, but internally he was panicking. By the next year he had dismissed Peter Knook and installed myerson and shuttered windows mobile 7 to completely rebuild from scratch windows phone 7.
As far as I remember, in those days here you often paid nothing or very little out of pocket for a new phone. It was more like an extra 10-20EUR on your monthly subscription. At least for the phones normal people had.
Sorry. I couldn't resist dredging up this old classic. It used to be compulsory viewing any time Steve Ballmer was mentioned.
Although, on a more practical level; with winter approaching and huge energy price rises on the horizon, the burning feeling of vicarious embarrassment you get while watching this might be a warm blessing on those cold December evenings ahead.
Pretty sure he just said whatever he needed to say to promote Microsoft. I can't take anything what any tech leader said/says as truth or their honest opinion. They all have something to sell.
Well, who would have thought back then that Apple would actually succeed in making the whole industry be taking multiple steps back for many years ahead?
[+] [-] threatofrain|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yftsui|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvladic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulfw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|3 years ago|reply
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Instagram
[+] [-] seba_dos1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DocTomoe|3 years ago|reply
It only really got actually general-public traction after they dropped the lock-in to specific mobile providers and proved that screen typing was feasible.
[+] [-] pmontra|3 years ago|reply
Edit: can't remember this too but maybe its 2 Mpx camera was a great one in 2007 (for a phone.) After all the view finder was unprecedented in size and it had wifi to download (or usb through iTunes?). No video recording, no selfie camera.
[+] [-] saurik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] padjo|3 years ago|reply
I didn’t quite realise at the time that it was a whole new device category that would essentially eliminate all other personal electronics but I remember it being clear that this was more than just another gadget, definitely not a joke!
[+] [-] flantasticle|3 years ago|reply
But what Jobs and Apple had was a longterm vision… And exceptional marketing.
[+] [-] Daub|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|3 years ago|reply
It's the similar thing with a lot of online business:music, videos , movies or ride sharing. First it's illegal and then someone big enough does it and it's a great business. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, Uber etc...
Technologically certainly fairly interesting but the real roadblock was regulations and contracts and conflicts of interest.
[+] [-] retskrad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laumars|3 years ago|reply
Feature phones could already do what the iPhone did (and in some cases even more). Multi-touch devices were available before the iPhone. PDAs had also been about for years and did everything the iPhone could do and more. And Android wasn’t far behind the iPhone and also improved upon the original iPhone.
In fact the original iPhone wasn’t even that good compared to the competition. It was lacking a lot of features people considered “must haves”. Native applications (everything was web apps originally), copy/paste, the ability to background applications, etc. And Ballmers point about the lack of a hardware keyboard was absolutely right for that era.
Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do. And so people often credit the iPhone as being uniquely revolutionary. It certainly was industry changing but it wasn’t singularly responsible for that change.
I say this as an iPhone user with an Apple Watch and other Apple hardware. So I do buy into the Apple ecosystem. But I’m also an old fart who has lived long enough to have first hand experience, both as a user and as a software engineer, pre and post the iPhone.
[+] [-] a_humean|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Normille|3 years ago|reply
Yes, people wil point out that Phone X had a touchscreen, Phone Y had a browser, Phone Z had something else. But the iPhone was the first phone to bring them all together in one package.
I used to run an Apple user forum way back before the iPhone was released, when all we had were the occasional rumour that Apple 'might be' thinking of bringing out a phone.
Smartphones are so ubiquitous now that I reckon people forget just how much excited anticipation there was at the prospect that Apple would do for the phone what they'd recently done for computers [remember how revolutionary the coloured iMacs seemed at the time?] and portable music [the iPod]. Back then no-one was enthusiastic about their phones. They were just some utilitarian gadget you carried, like a wallet, a pen or your car keys and there was an almost messianic belief that, if Apple brought out a phone it would be an equally miraculous device.
The launch of the iPhone actually kick-started [for better or worse] the promotion of the formerly humble phone to the ranks of 'gadgets you dreamt of owning'
[+] [-] gambiting|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thunderbong|3 years ago|reply
Nobody innovated, nobody focused on the developer or bothered with creating a platform for developers although developers were asking for it. Sony, Nokia, Ericsson had big fan bases.
There were any number of customizations that people all over the world created for them. But those phone companies didn't care.
Each year, all these phone companies would come out with new form factors to keep their fan bases hooked. That's it. No standardization, no nothing.
They all lost. And deservedly so. And we were left with Google cannibalizing open-source to create Android. Even then, and now, companies only accepted Android because they saw the rise of iPhone. It was a threat. They had to scramble to get something together.
Everyone else just gave up. Even now, all I hear is, "It's not an easy task to create a new phone because you have to create everything from the ground up". It's this attitude which has been the death of mobile communication.
Instead of having something that everyone could use and build upon, we're left with brittle pieces of proprietary software, completely at the mercy of two behemoths who call all the shots.
The PC revolution happened but nobody learned anything from it.
[+] [-] iamphilrae|3 years ago|reply
But failures to market and encourage adoption, and perhaps staining it with the “windows” brand, just led it down the path of being forgotten about by developers and so it withered and died.
[+] [-] vlunkr|3 years ago|reply
If only we all had decided collectively that 500$ really was too much for a phone. No it’s like no one even checks the price tag because their carrier is slowly milking it out of them instead.
[+] [-] jhugo|3 years ago|reply
Eh, iPhones are still popular in many countries where paying outright for your phone is the norm.
[+] [-] whizzter|3 years ago|reply
I had a SonyEricsson p900 (The p800, p900 and p910 series was released from 2002-2005) and it had a numpad for quick dialling, but for "smart" usage you really only used the touchscreen that covered most of the front real-estate (and a dial-knob for navigation since they hadn't figured out how to make UI's like Apple did later).
By 2006 however though I was looking to upgrade but SE chickened out and released successors (P990,M600,W950) that _decreased_ touch-screen realestate in favour of num/keypads on the front. It's really sad that they had everything in their hands but fubbed out totally.
But by 2007 the time was definetly right for the iPhone, disappointed by SE I began looking around and there was some "open" phone with touchscreen as well as that LG Prada. I even made a sketch of an ideal device a few weeks before Jobs came on screen.
Late 2006 sketch.. https://whizzter.woorlic.org/jonasphone.jpg
And yes, about as soon as iPhone 3G went on sale in Sweden I got one.
[+] [-] random314|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvense|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gordonjcp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schroedingersat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mytailorisrich|3 years ago|reply
To me this really makes this video a fine historical document.
[+] [-] riskneutral|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b800h|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Normille|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrhoOHNOrI
Sorry. I couldn't resist dredging up this old classic. It used to be compulsory viewing any time Steve Ballmer was mentioned.
Although, on a more practical level; with winter approaching and huge energy price rises on the horizon, the burning feeling of vicarious embarrassment you get while watching this might be a warm blessing on those cold December evenings ahead.
[+] [-] michelb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seba_dos1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suction|3 years ago|reply
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