Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)

#91

Post by jochem9 » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 8:23 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #78

bryanlarsen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those stylus touchscreen phones had a 640x480 or an 800x600 resolution and a full web browser. They could use basically any web site on the internet. The first iPhone had a 320x480 screen and could only use web sites that had a mobile version. I figured that access to the entire web was a killer feature that would let the clunkier stylus phones compete successfully with an iPhone. Not a prediction that aged well.

> The first iPhone had a 320x480 screen and could only use web sites that had a mobile version. That's just totally wrong. In fact, IIRC the original iPhone announcement showed a visit to the NY Times website to show how you could scroll around and zoom "full screen" websites. If anything, the ability to navigate "desktop" sites on the iPhone was much better than other phones because those other versions of "full web…

Didn't the iPhone OS also pioneer zooming in to website elements? I.e. double tapping on for instance the content of an article would zoom to the size of the div holding that content.

I think that feature made a huge impact on usability of desktop websites on the iPhone.

Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)

#92

Post by jochem9 » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 8:28 AM UTC

goodlinks wrote: post #46

ayewo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a lot of tech reporters were quick to mock the iPhone for not supporting a feature they all took for granted: copy and paste.

3g and wifi hotspot were another two big ones (edit: that made me stick with the somewhat ridiculous htc/windows i was using) iirc *edit: i say ridiculous as the iphone still made it look totally crap

3g came in the second gen iPhone (called iPhone 3G; afaik there has never been an iPhone 2). Only edge when outside wifi range was actually a huge downside of the first gen. It was sub par to the phone I had back then (Nokia N95). I only adopted the iPhone when it got 3g.

Re: Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)

#93

Post by spectre3d » Wed, Sep 06, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #55

wrs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone was a software innovation that was years ahead of the industry at the time, enabled by that one hardware innovation that you’re sounding rather dismissive of.

I don't think I'm "dismissing" anything. I replied to a comment that made what I think is an incorrect point about how the product was received at release. It's too easy to take a successful product and mythologize its origins, when in fact history was complicated and in a lot of ways the early iPhone kinda sucked. Again, there were existing app ecosystems on Symbian/Nokia and Windows, and none of that stuff, or anyt…

>You couldn't even get your email on the device outside of a handful of open source web clients

Totally false. The first iPhone shipped with Mail, which handled POP and IMAP accounts very well, including gmail accounts.