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IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

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Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#51
post #18
post #11

People get so caught up in existing paradigms and the resultant hegemonies which enforce them that they become blind to the obvious. This journalist is not alone in this. Examples permeate both media history and just criticism in general. For anything that is "obvious" there is always a contrarian who seems unable to see movement which we see as obvious. Anyhow, the iPhone announcement in 2007 was interesting from my…

>It brought domestically something that was already happening in South Korea, where "ownership" of content meant little to the average consumer. Can you expand on this?

What was happening in SK was that the hardware of the device started mattering more to consumers than the content on it. They tried to duplicate this in the US with Helio and failed. Unlike in SK, the bandwidth doesn't' make up for the crappy device, since our cell network is so far behind.

South Korea made content owners supper optimistic about things like "Comes with Music" (from Nokia) and the "dead-before-launching" Beyond Oblivion. Lock in via cell hardware was their last hope.

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#52
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there were a lot of touch devices pre iphone. I owned the nokia 770 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet around 06 and sony p900 around 04 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_P900 . The biggest difference was the capicitive screen vs resistive screen and the requirement of a stylus for most things.

Let's not forget a number of PocketPC touch (stylus) devices were also phone-capable. That was YEARS before the iPhone. It had "apps" too, but we simply used to called that "programs" at that time. And there was no central market/appstore or anything. Most of these devices were very open.

Had one of first Compaq iPaq GPRS sleeves, ordered directly from Hong Kong before US availability. (Late 2001, early 2002.) And Handango was my "app store" of choice.

The 5 years from 2002 to 2007 were interesting, but in hindsight seem to share so little with post iPhone industry.

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#53
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was on a small subset of phones and was placed on by specific carriers and manufacturers. But yes, I did forget.

I seem to remember it was on most Android phones, and sent quite a lot of data back to the carriers.

Nope. Look again. Almost nothing was transmitted to carriers. The big scare was the on-phone log. It was only Sprint and a handful of HTC devices.

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#54
post #8

I had my doubts too, until the minute I used one at the Apple store. I walked out with it, $599 poorer.

Are you sure your were poorer, in an overall wholistic sna. Did your purchase enrich your life by $599?

I know I got more than two years of use out of my iPhone 1 and then passed it on to my 2 year old daughter who used it for over a year. Well worth the investment and for all the little gripes or complaints I did have I still feel like I got more than I paid (including phone cost + carrier fees).

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about iOS feels ahead of it's time? iOS is showing it's age in my opinion. With Contracts and Charms in Windows and Intents in Android, I feel cramped and limited every time I use iOS (where Twitter integration is "magical" and things like Instagram are necessary ). Even with ICS and it's makeover and hardware acceleration it's hard to give iOS the "magic" edge these days. That having been said, it's of course v…

> What about iOS feels ahead of it's time? -iOS doesn't crash as often as Android -iOS doesn't have nearly as many security/privacy issues/virus/spyware -iOS is not(as) fragmented like Android -iOS is faster (no lags) and not as buggy as Android -iOS developer and user support way better than Android -iOS ecosystem/app market way better than Android -iOS user interface is simpler/easier to use/more straightforward th…

Really at the end of the day, we can only choose the devices that work best for us, personally. As an ex-iPhone user, I take issue with most of your list, but that's just me. iPhones are great for a huge number of people.

It's good to have options!

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#56
post #8

I had my doubts too, until the minute I used one at the Apple store. I walked out with it, $599 poorer.

Are you sure your were poorer, in an overall wholistic sna. Did your purchase enrich your life by $599? I know I got more than two years of use out of my iPhone 1 and then passed it on to my 2 year old daughter who used it for over a year. Well worth the investment and for all the little gripes or complaints I did have I still feel like I got more than I paid (including phone cost + carrier fees).

You're right - I'd say the phone improved by life by more than $599. I was coming from a typical crappy phone with a joke of a web browser. The iPhone is the first phone I really used to access the web.

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#57
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget a number of PocketPC touch (stylus) devices were also phone-capable. That was YEARS before the iPhone. It had "apps" too, but we simply used to called that "programs" at that time. And there was no central market/appstore or anything. Most of these devices were very open.

Had one of first Compaq iPaq GPRS sleeves, ordered directly from Hong Kong before US availability. (Late 2001, early 2002.) And Handango was my "app store" of choice. The 5 years from 2002 to 2007 were interesting, but in hindsight seem to share so little with post iPhone industry.

It clearly did not reach critical mass at that time. There were a number of obstacles to adoption - devices were powerful enough to do things, but compatibility with office software was not well built-in (If I remember correctly you could not synchronize emails with Outlook right out of the box). But third party applications were often very good and feature-plenty. The media players were especially capable and well designed.

It was however, impossible to upgrade the software at that time (the OS), which rendered your device obsolete every time a major WindowsMobile version was released. This is happening again with Android and I can't say this is a very good idea.

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember being very excited about these devices (and others like the Treo) before they were released, then invariably found myself profoundly disappointed (or at the very least underwhelmed) when I actually got my hands on one. None of them really succeeded in delivering anything more than an iPaq or a Palm Pilot and a mobile phone awkwardly squashed together in an ugly package, and they all required you to use a s…

Most user friendly device before iPhone was probably Danger's HipTop aka T-Mobile Sidekick. It was actually fun to use, and innovated smartphone usability in huge number of ways. But it seemed marketed as more of a toy, too bad.

Well I was excited about that one too, but for whatever reason it was never released where I live :-(

Re: IPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007)

#59
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the technology. Apple actually made people want those touch devices. They were the first ones to package it correctly. I'm sure there were many people who thought and wrote about rrepublics and democracies before the French revolution. But the revolution was what did it. Maybe the technology of those other phones was revolutionary. But revolutionary technology no one wants hardly matters. Apple found the revol…

I think a lot of people wanted to use the Palm touch devices. There was a time when "Palm Pilot" was the "Kleenex" or "Band-aid" of the PDA world. Everything was a "Palm Pilot" even if it wasn't. Even future Palm products were "Palm Pilots" to the outsider. Now, Palm did not do a super job when it moved to the PDA+Phone mashup. It was clunky... not sexy.

But how many people used PDAs? Those were always niche devices.

Smartphones is where it's at.

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