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What DID Apple innovate?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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I remember the first keynote. Jobs kept repeating phrases like music player, web browser, and phone together like that. And then boom, he whipped out the first iPhone that was in his pocket the whole time. While there were similar devices at the time, nothing (to my knowledge) was all one package especially in an all touch device that small.
Yeah, people seem to forget just how groundbreaking the form factor, all the swipe and pinch (and multitouch) interface stuff, having one giant touchscreen, the user friendliness if pretty much everything (versus other phones at the time), etc was. Soon everyone was trying to copy it, which is fine. But saying all they innovated was rounded corners and everything else already existed and was just as good is dumb.
There were a lot of little things that aren't relevant today but were a big deal at the time. For example it had a web browser that actually worked to view the real internet, even though 99% of webpages were designed for screens the size of 30 iPhones.
Today all webpages are designed to work well on small screens - but that never would have happened without Apple. Or at least it would have taken a lot longer to happen. They got enough people using the internet on a phone to force web developers to support small screens. That was a big achievement - even today it's a massive amount of work to design a webpage that works well with a mouse and with your thumbs. The tools we have now didn't exist back then, and before Mobile Safari there weren't any users of small screens anyway so why would anyone put in all that work?
Phones with web browsers predated the iPhone. They were completely unusable.
In the 2007 tech press lull between announcement and launch, there was briefly a made up scandal of accusing Apple of using models with really large hands in promotional photos/videos to make the iPhone look smaller than it was. It's wild to think about now.
Blackberry did all of that years before Apple. Sure, they didn’t have a touchscreen, but all of the capability was there.
I had a Blackberry Curve and I don't recall it having a music player. It was also so clunky compared to the iPhone is that it's almost unfair to say it had the same capabilities. I'm not an Apple fan but I have to grant that their UI was a huge advancement over anything that came before it.
The user interface itself was the innovation. Hell, even Microsoft and Intel had the portable Windows Mobile things. Compared to an iPhone they liked like they were from the Stone Age. I had one and swapping it felt like going to another dimension.
I had two WinMob devices, and while they were pretty cool to show off, they were awful, clunky pieces of shit to actually use. I was forever glad they had a slide out QWERTY keyboard, because having to ‘type’ messages on a resistive screen with a stylus was hell.
When people found out they ran on ‘Windows’ they’d ask if they could run x or y software, and I’d have to say no, the OS is really just Windows branded and doesn’t actually really work like Windows.
I guess it would be better to say they innovated the slate style phone. Android didn’t come out until 2008 and all other top phones used physical buttons. The iPhone technically only had 5 for general functions.
The LG Prada did that before iPhone too. More accurate to say Apple popularised it and made it a more cohesive package
Haha I had to look it up, but that’s the definition of “innovation”. Literally taking something existing and making it better.
My ex-wife had the non-Prada version of that handset, and it was actually pretty cool. Didn’t really do much more than any normal phone of the time, mind, but was at least technically a smart phone.