Predictions of the Future From the 1960s • Hacker News Board

Re: Predictions of the Future From the 1960s

#11

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Jul 21, 2011, 4:16 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #8

joezydeco wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the iPhone really an amazing new discovery that came out of nowhere? I see it more as the result of inevitable cost reductions in recent technology (fast/low power CPUs, capacitive screens, better LCDs, higher density batteries/flash/RAM)...combined with a willingness to tell the phone carriers to suck it and do a phone the way Apple wanted to do it.

Ever since the first Palm PDA came out, it was obvious that the iPhone was going to happen. I was drooling for something like it back in '98 ... '99, or whenever it was that I bought my first Palm. I was like, "okay, now let's combine this with a cell phone, and add more CPU, and more memory, and a color screen, and..." Alas, it was not to be, yet. But then it did happen.

Well, you can go back farther to Alan Kay's Dynabook (1968) to predict the iPhone. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook)

Even Jobs has wanted to make a Dynabook from the early days (http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Pirate_Flag.txt).

There was also the crew from UIUC that won Apple's "Design the Computer of the Year 2000" back in 1987. Their design? A tablet.

Re: Predictions of the Future From the 1960s

#12

Post by Florin_Andrei » Thu, Jul 21, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #11

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since the first Palm PDA came out, it was obvious that the iPhone was going to happen. I was drooling for something like it back in '98 ... '99, or whenever it was that I bought my first Palm. I was like, "okay, now let's combine this with a cell phone, and add more CPU, and more memory, and a color screen, and..." Alas, it was not to be, yet. But then it did happen.

Well, you can go back farther to Alan Kay's Dynabook (1968) to predict the iPhone. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook ) Even Jobs has wanted to make a Dynabook from the early days ( http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Pirate_Flag.txt ). There was also the crew from UIUC that won Apple's "Design the Computer of the Year 2000" back in 1987. Their design? A tablet.

> the crew from UIUC that won Apple's "Design the Computer of the Year 2000" back in 1987. Their design? A tablet.

Star Trek TNG also featured imagined tablets, and they started out roughly around the same time. The design just makes sense, it's natural.

Re: Predictions of the Future From the 1960s

#13

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Jul 21, 2011, 7:04 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #9

joezydeco wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the iPhone really an amazing new discovery that came out of nowhere? I see it more as the result of inevitable cost reductions in recent technology (fast/low power CPUs, capacitive screens, better LCDs, higher density batteries/flash/RAM)...combined with a willingness to tell the phone carriers to suck it and do a phone the way Apple wanted to do it.

Hardware-wise, yeah, all of the components were easily predictable. But I'd wager the vast majority of people would have still expected a new device using those components to have software full of "computery" things such as scroll bars (probably operated via a stylus) and a task manager instead of the iPhone OS's fluid, natural, free-of-computer-administrative-debris interface. That's what made the iPhone appeal to p…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, I agree with you that the touch interface is probably the largest leap technologically that the iPhone presented to the market.

Modal interface, nothing that needed a stylus, intelligent button centering, usable gestures. It all added up to a very usable package. The stylus-based phones were just so unusable to me.