Everyone else at first mocked apple for not providing a physical keyboard.
The Blackberry crowd certainly thought a missing keyboard was a bad idea, sure.
As for Windows Mobile, slide-out physical keyboards were actually just becoming a popular option so users could avoid having to tip-tap with a stylus on a tiny onscreen keyboard.
That was because of the smaller screens, though. Full screen software keyboards were also just becoming available and usable on larger screened phones.
Quote:
Nothing looked like an iPhone until the iPhone.
There are not too many basic designs if you decide to go all touch.
In fact, the iPhone prototypes bore a striking resemblance to the actually-sold 2005 Windows CE Pideon Bluebird. (In an EU trial where this phone was shown, Apple lost their trade dress argument.)
There were also non-working all-touch concepts like the 2006 BenQ Black Box, which I think had a cool idea of various modes showing up under a jet black glassy skin.
Synaptics (the capacitive touchpad suppliers) showed off their working phone prototype during 2006:
There are more examples.
Heck, the Open Linux phone movement announced their capacitive multi-touch, pinch-zoom, phone design with icon dock, months before the iPhone was revealed. (There are some who think Apple immediately stole their ideas. I don't. I think it was simply simultaneous, independent design coincidence. E.g. once you decide to use multi-touch, many obvious gestures follow. Not to mention that everyone had seen Jeff Han's demo by then.)
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If the design was so obvious how do you explain this?
Why did no major maker switch to all touch at that moment? One reason is clear:
Everyone other than Apple had years of legacy input methods, software, and smaller screens to support. Nobody wanted to alienate their customer base with big changes.
Because Apple had no such legacy phones to support, they could skip ahead and do whatever they wished.
Now, six years later, Apple is likewise caught in a very similar legacy whirlpool, and it shows in their reluctance to embrace different input, or radical screen size or radical UI changes.
Quote:
Before the iPhone no smartphone provided anything remotely resembling a usable web browser.
Some browsers like Opera, Netfront and Picsel (with tap to zoom) were not that bad. They just needed a bigger screen to work on.
For example, in 2001, I was fully mobile on a wireless WinCE Jornada using full Internet Explorer 4.0 (not Pocket IE) on a 640x240 screen. As most websites at that time were only about 640 wide, it was a great experience with little need for side scrolling and certainly no need for zoom.
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Nobody had sensors to disable a touch screen when the phone was against your ear. Nobody had gyroscopes to sense rotation and automatically rotate the display...
Sensors have been around forever.
Apple is the defendant right now in a case for violating a 1999 (?) Motorola patent on a sensor to disable touch input when the phone is held to the ear.
The 2003 MyOrigio all-touch smartphone had a rotation sensor, and could even scroll by tilt, if I recall correctly:
None of this is meant to denigrate what Apple did by actually bringing a comprehensive package to mass market. It is meant to preserve pieces of a smartphone history that far too many people are unaware of.
Wow! I am just so disappointed that none of the regulars here caught, or pointed out the obvious irony of "Flawgic" at work.
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I hate the article, and Siri doesn't work for me, for two reasons.
First, I work on three countries, and my accent in two of these languages is that of my own country. Siri doesn't recognize those commands, which sucks a lot, because Dragon Naturally Speaking has absolutely no issues.
Second, Siri is half integrated (as in, I still have to press OK or choose among results instead of just telling Siri to choose the second result). I hope Apple will improve this soon,because it would become awesome. Right now, I can't even use the Notes properly (as in "Siri, make a note that I have to get the key at the counter in the morning", or "Siri, add lines to the note titled "Training" --"What do you want to add to the note titled "Training" -- "Add "Execute 50 pushups before lunch" " which would be very useful, apart from the doubtful example... I mean, I don't need to train, i'm too sexy for my shirt )
None of this is meant to denigrate what Apple did by actually bringing a comprehensive package to mass market. It is meant to preserve pieces of a smartphone history that far too many people are unaware of.
Thank you for posting this. While Apple's design is certainly admirable, I've been saying this about OpenMoko for years (and I was on the translation team of OpenMoko.org BEFORE the iPhone, and I nonetheless do use an iPhone...)
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by freediverx
Everyone else at first mocked apple for not providing a physical keyboard.
The Blackberry crowd certainly thought a missing keyboard was a bad idea, sure.
As for Windows Mobile, slide-out physical keyboards were actually just becoming a popular option so users could avoid having to tip-tap with a stylus on a tiny onscreen keyboard.
That was because of the smaller screens, though. Full screen software keyboards were also just becoming available and usable on larger screened phones.
Quote:
Nothing looked like an iPhone until the iPhone.
There are not too many basic designs if you decide to go all touch.
In fact, the iPhone prototypes bore a striking resemblance to the actually-sold 2005 Windows CE Pideon Bluebird. (In an EU trial where this phone was shown, Apple lost their trade dress argument.)
There were also non-working all-touch concepts like the 2006 BenQ Black Box, which I think had a cool idea of various modes showing up under a jet black glassy skin.
Synaptics (the capacitive touchpad suppliers) showed off their working phone prototype during 2006:
There are more examples.
Heck, the Open Linux phone movement announced their capacitive multi-touch, pinch-zoom, phone design with icon dock, months before the iPhone was revealed. (There are some who think Apple immediately stole their ideas. I don't. I think it was simply simultaneous, independent design coincidence. E.g. once you decide to use multi-touch, many obvious gestures follow. Not to mention that everyone had seen Jeff Han's demo by then.)
Quote:
If the design was so obvious how do you explain this?
Why did no major maker switch to all touch at that moment? One reason is clear:
Everyone other than Apple had years of legacy input methods, software, and smaller screens to support. Nobody wanted to alienate their customer base with big changes.
Because Apple had no such legacy phones to support, they could skip ahead and do whatever they wished.
Now, six years later, Apple is likewise caught in a very similar legacy whirlpool, and it shows in their reluctance to embrace different input, or radical screen size or radical UI changes.
Quote:
Before the iPhone no smartphone provided anything remotely resembling a usable web browser.
Some browsers like Opera, Netfront and Picsel (with tap to zoom) were not that bad. They just needed a bigger screen to work on.
For example, in 2001, I was fully mobile on a wireless WinCE Jornada using full Internet Explorer 4.0 (not Pocket IE) on a 640x240 screen. As most websites at that time were only about 640 wide, it was a great experience with little need for side scrolling and certainly no need for zoom.
Quote:
Nobody had sensors to disable a touch screen when the phone was against your ear. Nobody had gyroscopes to sense rotation and automatically rotate the display...
Sensors have been around forever.
Apple is the defendant right now in a case for violating a 1999 (?) Motorola patent on a sensor to disable touch input when the phone is held to the ear.
The 2003 MyOrigio all-touch smartphone had a rotation sensor, and could even scroll by tilt, if I recall correctly:
None of this is meant to denigrate what Apple did by actually bringing a comprehensive package to mass market. It is meant to preserve pieces of a smartphone history that far too many people are unaware of.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc
Wow! I am just so disappointed that none of the regulars here caught, or pointed out the obvious irony of "Flawgic" at work.
-
I hate the article, and Siri doesn't work for me, for two reasons.
First, I work on three countries, and my accent in two of these languages is that of my own country. Siri doesn't recognize those commands, which sucks a lot, because Dragon Naturally Speaking has absolutely no issues.
Second, Siri is half integrated (as in, I still have to press OK or choose among results instead of just telling Siri to choose the second result). I hope Apple will improve this soon,because it would become awesome. Right now, I can't even use the Notes properly (as in "Siri, make a note that I have to get the key at the counter in the morning", or "Siri, add lines to the note titled "Training" --"What do you want to add to the note titled "Training" -- "Add "Execute 50 pushups before lunch" " which would be very useful, apart from the doubtful example... I mean, I don't need to train, i'm too sexy for my shirt
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
None of this is meant to denigrate what Apple did by actually bringing a comprehensive package to mass market. It is meant to preserve pieces of a smartphone history that far too many people are unaware of.
Thank you for posting this. While Apple's design is certainly admirable, I've been saying this about OpenMoko for years (and I was on the translation team of OpenMoko.org BEFORE the iPhone, and I nonetheless do use an iPhone...)