Read the article before jumping into roasting. The author is NOT criticizing iPhone - he's skeptical simply because, at the time, network operators dictated which manufacturers enter the mobile phone market or not. It was a highly controlled market, and Apple not only had to build a great phone, but also had to punch through that stupid business barrier. In the end, Apple did make it.
Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#12Read the article before jumping into roasting. The author is NOT criticizing iPhone - he's skeptical simply because, at the time, network operators dictated which manufacturers enter the mobile phone market or not. It was a highly controlled market, and Apple not only had to build a great phone, but also had to punch through that stupid business barrier. In the end, Apple did make it.
Iirc Apple basically bribed Cingular I think to get a toe in the market, at the time Apple fans would go to great lengths to get things working (including installing FireWire to use iPods on windows) so it worked out. AT&T later bought Cingular.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#13Matches the same prediction for Tesla - the hardware companies ‘will catch up’ to the software ones. Yes cars and phones are hardware, but that’s relatively easy compared to the software. In cars people think software is just infotainment, but it’s really hundreds of controllers all networked and often each written by different vendors. Tesla has brought most of them in house, and made them updateable. Enabling featu…
It's all just work, and different organizations are better at different flavors of work. Some have a broader range than others.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#14Whew, I'm so happy I've always been right in my predictions, unlike this poor fellow, who has probably been unemployed since this inexcusable prediction failure.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#15The reader replies were good.
https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/09/apple_iphone_letters/
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#16The second Apple debuted that smooth as fucking butter interface it was clear as day how badly behind people were at the time. Pre-iPhone the form of phones was incredible but the function was dogshit garbage. Small displays rendering everything in software and failing to hit 15fps on a good day because these poor little ARM chips were being abused to within an inch of their lives. If you were seriously lucky you mig…
I once read an interview with Anssi Vanjoki, who was one of the top executives at Nokia. He said indeed that when he first held an iPhone he knew it was over for Nokia.
If I remember correctly, Nokia had good tech for smart phones, but no vision or courage to drive the market in that direction. It was not a well-managed company.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#17The second Apple debuted that smooth as fucking butter interface it was clear as day how badly behind people were at the time. Pre-iPhone the form of phones was incredible but the function was dogshit garbage. Small displays rendering everything in software and failing to hit 15fps on a good day because these poor little ARM chips were being abused to within an inch of their lives. If you were seriously lucky you mig…
I don’t recall the precise details, but one of the key Android people was watching the keynote and had that immediate realization: their prototypes had just been obsoleted.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#18Reading these articles is always amusing. The iPhone became one of the most successful products in modern history. With that, doomer articles like these are bound to be used for decades as examples of how predictions can backfire catastrophically. No journalist wants to be known as the guy who predicted the iPhone would fail.
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#19The second Apple debuted that smooth as fucking butter interface it was clear as day how badly behind people were at the time. Pre-iPhone the form of phones was incredible but the function was dogshit garbage. Small displays rendering everything in software and failing to hit 15fps on a good day because these poor little ARM chips were being abused to within an inch of their lives. If you were seriously lucky you mig…
I don’t recall the precise details, but one of the key Android people was watching the keynote and had that immediate realization: their prototypes had just been obsoleted.
This was the original Android demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg
Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)
#20Read the article before jumping into roasting. The author is NOT criticizing iPhone - he's skeptical simply because, at the time, network operators dictated which manufacturers enter the mobile phone market or not. It was a highly controlled market, and Apple not only had to build a great phone, but also had to punch through that stupid business barrier. In the end, Apple did make it.
Iirc Apple basically bribed Cingular I think to get a toe in the market, at the time Apple fans would go to great lengths to get things working (including installing FireWire to use iPods on windows) so it worked out. AT&T later bought Cingular.
Wow, Cingular... that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.