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iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

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Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#51

Post by snom380 »

mrtksn wrote: post #10

All these “iPhone is doomed” folks had good arguments, the original iPhone was a flawed device. On paper, the incumbent mega corporations should have been able to come up with an iPhone killer quickly, considering the resources available to them. What they missed was the inertia and the lack of agility in these big companies. They kept insisting on their current plans until it was too late. Only Google was capable of…

I think most of the "iPhone is doomed" people fundamentally misunderstood what the iPhone was and what it did compared to existing phones. And of course, they judged Apples future on the first device, which they considered flaws in a bunch of ways that didn't matter (I recall how many people laughed about it missing MMS and multitasking, which turned out to not matter (it could multitask for the features people used), and something they added later.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#52

Post by fmajid »

snom380 wrote: post #51
mrtksn wrote: post #10

All these “iPhone is doomed” folks had good arguments, the original iPhone was a flawed device. On paper, the incumbent mega corporations should have been able to come up with an iPhone killer quickly, considering the resources available to them. What they missed was the inertia and the lack of agility in these big companies. They kept insisting on their current plans until it was too late. Only Google was capable of…

I think most of the "iPhone is doomed" people fundamentally misunderstood what the iPhone was and what it did compared to existing phones. And of course, they judged Apples future on the first device, which they considered flaws in a bunch of ways that didn't matter (I recall how many people laughed about it missing MMS and multitasking, which turned out to not matter (it could multitask for the features people used)…

It’s how a talented artist, craftsman or sportsman makes things look effortless, when it took them years of grit, determination and hard work to reach that point.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#53

Post by snom380 »

simonh wrote: post #28
mrtksn wrote: post #10

All these “iPhone is doomed” folks had good arguments, the original iPhone was a flawed device. On paper, the incumbent mega corporations should have been able to come up with an iPhone killer quickly, considering the resources available to them. What they missed was the inertia and the lack of agility in these big companies. They kept insisting on their current plans until it was too late. Only Google was capable of…

One thing they missed was the importance of two things. A full 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking workstation class operating system with a full TCP/IP networking stack under the hood. Combined with a desktop class object oriented GUI application framework, of course tailored to a small screen touch interface. These are not visible features of the device. You can’t tell just by looking at it or even using it, except tha…

Agreed. IMO, a naysayer that did their research should have watched the original iPhone intro and would not miss the slide where Steve Jobs says "iPhone runs OS X", with a list of all the features they "got for free". You wouldn't have to know much about Apple to also realize the amount of software they'd already written that could be adapted to a mobile format and the advantage they would have over the competitors (Nokia, Blackberry and Microsoft with their existing Windows Mobile OS).

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#54

Post by matthewdgreen »

zmmmmm wrote: post #50

Beyond mocking someone who was clearly wrong, is there something to be learned? How can we avoid this in our own current thinking about what may succeed or not? Apple is about to launch another product that people are deeply sceptical of - their VR glasses. Very very few people I know seem to believe this is going to work and become a mass market product in the end (even people inside Apple, apparently). Are they wro…

It’s hard to say because we haven’t seen the glasses. If someone gives me a pair and they’re an order-of-magnitude quality improvement over previous VR sets, maybe they’ll be right. There is certainly some level of AR/VR hardware that would be amazing enough that the space takes off, it’s just that we haven’t seen it yet.

That’s where the iPhone was in 2008: order-of-magnitude improvement over every previous smartphone. The author of this piece recognized that and didn’t even dispute it; they just thought that Windows Phone would somehow be better (for nebulous reasons.) It wasn’t. The reasons for that might be worth discussing.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#55

Post by snom380 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #25
mrtksn wrote: post #10

All these “iPhone is doomed” folks had good arguments, the original iPhone was a flawed device. On paper, the incumbent mega corporations should have been able to come up with an iPhone killer quickly, considering the resources available to them. What they missed was the inertia and the lack of agility in these big companies. They kept insisting on their current plans until it was too late. Only Google was capable of…

Apple might have genuinely murdered the entire market if they hadn’t insisted on their ridiculous exclusivity plan with AT&T. Whichever Apple exec greenlit that must surely have been an industrial saboteur because it saved 5+ other companies from ruin.

Apple went with the operator that would allow them control over the device. This was at a time where Nokia sold specific versions of their smartphones with WiFi disabled in the US. And the situation was similar elsewhere. So in many of the countries they entered, they often started with a smaller operator. They bet that the bigger operators would change their mind after seeing iPhones success (and how many subscribers they had lost), and they turned out to be right. In hindsight, they managed to upend the whole telecom industry (or at least accelerate that process), which is now more or less reduced to "dumb data pipes" that you use when you're outside of WiFi coverage.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#56

Post by wtallis »

Invictus0 wrote: post #34

> "Microsoft Research has a technology concept that uses the device's camera as a motion sensor, enabling motion control while using the device. This means devices will not need accelerometers and other complicated gyroscopes to get these features, and that existing Windows Mobile devices could be upgraded to full Windows Mobile 7 functionality." Even to this day this makes no sense. How could a camera, which could b…

I don't think there's any way to interpret that as anything other than Microsoft making excuses and trying to pretend that their existing mobile software efforts and hardware install base were still worth something in a post-iPhone market. It's probably what their investors and partners and some of their customers wanted to hear. It's definitely not what their engineers and product managers needed to hear.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#57

Post by snom380 »

fsh wrote: post #40

I would argue that the first iPhone is in a different device category than its successors. It had only a 2G modem (very slow even in 2007) and (at launch) no third-party app support. It was essentially a dumb phone with a gimmicky interface that could be also used for surfing the web while on WiFi. The iPhone 3G was the first true smartphone from Apple. I therefore find it not surprising that many journalists where n…

Calling it a dumb phone with a gimmicky interface doesn't add up to me. Yes, it had a 2G modem, but it was still running OS X under the hood just like all the following models and had a suite of apps that worked way better than existing smartphones.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#58

Post by wtallis »

santoshalper wrote: post #36

Obviously, this opinion has aged like milk. In the author's defense, Apple had, at the time, a remarkable history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Remember it had only been a decade since Microsoft bailed out Apple with $150M. Apple is only a juggernaut in hindsight. By 2008, Apple had built some really nice computers that had brought them back from the edge of death, and the iPod was obviously a big hit…

The massive success of the iPhone was not a foregone conclusion from day one. But it was obvious that Apple was entering the market as a serious contender with a product that had industry-wide ramifications and the highest possible visibility and awareness among its target market.

There was no plausible way to believe that the iPhone would quickly flop and have zero long-term impact on the broader phone market. (Even if the iPhone had never even shipped, the announcement itself changed people's expectations for smartphones.) The only plausible "iPhone failure" scenarios had to postulate that Apple's competition would be able to quickly identify the key innovations in the iPhone (as opposed to features that turn out to just be a flashy gimmick) and incorporate them into their own product lines while using their incumbent status to stop Apple from expanding much beyond their initial foothold in the market. But after the success of the iPod, Apple was already the acknowledged best at distilling a well-rounded, refined product from an immature market still experimenting with new ideas.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#59

Post by snom380 »

santoshalper wrote: post #36

Obviously, this opinion has aged like milk. In the author's defense, Apple had, at the time, a remarkable history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Remember it had only been a decade since Microsoft bailed out Apple with $150M. Apple is only a juggernaut in hindsight. By 2008, Apple had built some really nice computers that had brought them back from the edge of death, and the iPod was obviously a big hit…

My thinking was simply that they had millions of loyal, happy iPod users that would be replacing their iPods at some point in time, and iPhone would be a natural upgrade path for them. And they had retail outlets where they could push the iPhone. But I was skeptical about them being able to deal with the mobile operators, and I underestimated how slow competitors would be to catch up.

Re: iPhone Doomed to Failure (2008)

#60

Post by johnwalkr »

fsh wrote: post #40

I would argue that the first iPhone is in a different device category than its successors. It had only a 2G modem (very slow even in 2007) and (at launch) no third-party app support. It was essentially a dumb phone with a gimmicky interface that could be also used for surfing the web while on WiFi. The iPhone 3G was the first true smartphone from Apple. I therefore find it not surprising that many journalists where n…

Those shortcomings didn’t matter because the interface, screen, safari, iTunes and Google maps were so good. If I recall correctly, every iPhone plan was unlimited data or at least much more data than people normally got meaning you could browse the full featured web (ok without flash). Most phones before it with web browsers were convenient in a pinch for looking up an address or something, but didn’t feel like pocket computers.
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