Android docs reveal before iPhone, Google's plan was a Java button phone

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  • Reply 161 of 175
    aitbaitb Posts: 1member
    Copying or not, in the end we consumers won. Both iOS and Android are good in their own way. iOS for people who like it simple, fast and smooth, Android for power users who want more control over their phone. I use both iOS and Android and I'm happy.
  • Reply 162 of 175

    This is exactly like when a guy hits on a hot girl and after she turns him down he tells everyone she's an ugly slut -- and then dates her twin sister.

  • Reply 163 of 175
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    Ah, gotcha now. So Rubin may have faked being surprised to throw off those who might have suspected Schmidt. Well I suppose anything is possible, including Eric Schmidt doing just what he should have and keeping his two positions separate just like Levinson and Campbell supposedly did.

     

    Google had someone on Apple's board of directors when they were developing the iPhone -- and Jobs had a gentleman's agreement that Google wasn't going to make a phone. That's why Steve Jobs got so mad at one time he said; "We're going to war" -- if my memory serves me.

     

    The other advanced warning for the competition was that the iPhone as assembled at Samsung's facilities -- so they'd know every detail of how to build one.

     

    Both companies had a privileged relationship with Apple and they both stabbed them in the back -- like when Bill Gates took the Apple API and called it Windows -- after helping to rip off CP/M for IBM and calling it DOS of course.

     

    I guess that's just business -- but why are the courts and everyone else acting like everybody didn't copy Apple? It's a hell of a lot more than just a grid of icons on a screen -- there were a million OTHER ways a smart phone could have been designed. All the companies that ripped off Apple are still around, and all the companies that didn't did quite poorly. It's almost like the lesson of nuclear proliferation; get nukes however you can -- those without them get invaded for their adherence to treaties.

     

    Most people are good, most companies act like Hyenas but without the fancy etiquette. 

  • Reply 164 of 175
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Google had someone on Apple's board of directors when they were developing the iPhone -- and Jobs had a gentleman's agreement that Google wasn't going to make a phone. That's why Steve Jobs got so mad at one time he said; "We're going to war" -- if my memory serves me.

    I don't think your memory is serving you well. I've not ever seen a mention of any gentleman's agreement about not building a phone. Google was signaling an upcoming "Google Phone" long before the iPhone ever became public. It wasn't any secret, didn't catch Apple off-guard, and Mr. Jobs would have known about it before Eric Schmidt was ever invited to join Apple's BOD.

    What you probably were thinking of was Mr. Jobs telling Sergey and Co. not to offer multi-touch capabilities, something already baked into Android but not activated out of deference to his request. Not long afterwards Palm came out with a touch-enabled phone OS and a smartphone offering multi-touch and altho Mr Jobs threatened he never followed thru and allowed Palm to continue selling it, never bringing a lawsuit. At that point Android would have been odd man out, the only one of the three not having the feature. Google made the only business decision that made sense if Android was going to be offered; activate the multi-touch Android already had. That's what pissed Mr. Jobs off according to popular accounts of it.
  • Reply 165 of 175
    Google had someone on Apple's board of directors when they were developing the iPhone -- and Jobs had a gentleman's agreement that Google wasn't going to make a phone. That's why Steve Jobs got so mad at one time he said; "We're going to war" -- if my memory serves me.

    The other advanced warning for the competition was that the iPhone as assembled at Samsung's facilities -- so they'd know every detail of how to build one.

    Both companies had a privileged relationship with Apple and they both stabbed them in the back -- like when Bill Gates took the Apple API and called it Windows -- after helping to rip off CP/M for IBM and calling it DOS of course.

    I guess that's just business -- but why are the courts and everyone else acting like everybody didn't copy Apple? It's a hell of a lot more than just a grid of icons on a screen -- there were a million OTHER ways a smart phone could have been designed. All the companies that ripped off Apple are still around, and all the companies that didn't did quite poorly. It's almost like the lesson of nuclear proliferation; get nukes however you can -- those without them get invaded for their adherence to treaties.

    Most people are good, most companies act like Hyenas but without the fancy etiquette. 

    And the iPhone wasn't built in Samsung facilities.

    The timetable allows for everything to have happened as it did without a super spy, a good actor, and a Samsung built iPhone. A wholly different part of the Samsung conglomerate manufactured a few components of the iPhone and that's it. I'm not sure if it was that way then but now the chips are still Apple's designs anyways.
  • Reply 166 of 175
    djkikromedjkikrome Posts: 189member
    Another terrific article. Definitely a keeper.
  • Reply 167 of 175
    ukjbukjb Posts: 19member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Michael Scrip View Post





    While the LG Prada and the Apple iPhone were being developed during roughly the same time period... does anyone really think that Apple got the idea of using a capacitive touchscreen from LG?



    I think it's more of a coincidence than anything.



    What's the theory... that Apple was developing a QWERTY phone all along... but they had spies over at the LG headquarters in South Korea and learned about the capacitive touchscreen?



    No... I don't think it was corporate espionage.



    So what's another theory? The LG Prada was shown publicly in September 2006... maybe that's where Apple got the idea for a capacitive touchscreen phone.



    Would that have been enough time for Apple to get the idea for a capacitive touchscreen from LG and have a working model to announce just 4 months later?



    That's an even crazier theory.



    I never understood the premise that the LG Prada had ANYTHING to do with the development of the iPhone. But people keep bringing it up.

     

    Perhaps not, but to say google stole the idea from apple just means that maybe you are all giving apple credit for something they didn't do. maybe they stole the idea from LG... or is that too simple of an explanation for you?

  • Reply 168 of 175
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    ukjb wrote: »
    Perhaps not, but to say google stole the idea from apple just means that maybe you are all giving apple credit for something they didn't do. maybe they stole the idea from LG... or is that too simple of an explanation for you?

    Seriously? Google even said they had to do an about face once the iPhone was released.
  • Reply 169 of 175
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by ukjb View Post

    maybe they stole the idea from LG... or is that too simple of an explanation for you?


     

    Except they didn’t, period, end of discussion.

  • Reply 170 of 175
    comleycomley Posts: 139member
    ukjb wrote: »
    Perhaps not, but to say google stole the idea from apple just means that maybe you are all giving apple credit for something they didn't do. maybe they stole the idea from LG... or is that too simple of an explanation for you?

    Maybe father Christmas had the idea first but the elves were too busy in Lapland preparing for Christmas
  • Reply 171 of 175
    ukjb wrote: »
    Perhaps not, but to say google stole the idea from apple just means that maybe you are all giving apple credit for something they didn't do. maybe they stole the idea from LG... or is that too simple of an explanation for you?

    Apple started developing multi-touch glass displays in the early 2000's for a potential tablet device. But in 2003-2004 they focused on "Project Purple" which was a smaller handheld device with a multi-touch glass display that eventually became the iPhone.

    But you think LG should get the credit? How is that logic even possible? :err:
  • Reply 172 of 175
    hungoverhungover Posts: 603member

    Yet another revisionist article that tries to mislead the reader.

     

    DED, why must you continue to pretend that prior to the iphone all phones had Qwerty or numeric keyboards?

     

    HTC's first ever handset was the 2002 Wallaby. It ran Windows Mobile and sported a 3.5" touch screen. It had no keyboard.  

  • Reply 173 of 175
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    hungover wrote: »
    HTC's first ever handset was the 2002 Wallaby. It ran Windows Mobile and sported a 3.5" touch screen. It had no keyboard.  

    Ah, the Wallaby!

    http://pocketnow.com/thought/a-look-at-the-first-htc-phone-ever-released

    700

    A full eight years ago, in the spring of 2002, the O2 Wallaby hit store shelves. It was running Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition (and you thought “Windows Phone 7 Series” felt too long?), with an Intel StronARM CPU clocking in at 206MHz. It had just 32MB of RAM and 32MB or ROM, and if you left the battery discharge, you would lose all of your data. The screen was the same size as the iPhone at 3.5?, with QVGA 320×240 resolution. It wasn’t capable of 3G or even EDGE…but you could get a GPRS data signal which would max out at about 15kbps (3.5G devices of today can achieve download speeds of over 3000kbps on a good day). You could connect the Wallaby to your computer with either the serial interface, or USB 1.0. It had expansion slots for MMC/SD, so adding more memory was possible. For short-range data transfer, forget Bluetooth, you had to deal with infrared. Powering everything was a decent-sized 1500mAh battery. The phone cost £899 outright, or around $1450 in today’s market. But for that, you got a stylus cleverly hidden inside of the antenna ;).
  • Reply 174 of 175
    Dan_DilgerDan_Dilger Posts: 1,583member
    hungover wrote: »
    Yet another revisionist article that tries to mislead the reader.

    DED, why must you continue to pretend that prior to the iphone all phones had Qwerty or numeric keyboards?

    HTC's first ever handset was the 2002 Wallaby. It ran Windows Mobile and sported a 3.5" touch screen. It had no keyboard.  

    Any Windows Mobile phone with a touch screen was not Microsoft's definition of a WM Smartphone. It was a Pocket PC.

    But why are you all upset about the subject when a) this article isn't about WinMobile, b) the novelty of iPhone wasn't that it had a crappy touchscreen that required a stylus to use and c) Pocket PC was a commercial failure that nobody cared about the moment the iPhone appeared?

    All Windows Mobile phones were crap, most Pocket PC devices used terrible resistance screens, and nobody liked them, not even most spellbound Microsoft fans.

    The only reason you know anything about that model is from reading Wikipedia. It was tragic crap and nothing like the iPhone experience.

    Also: nothing new about touchscreens in general in 2002, as Palm Pilots had been around since ~1997 and Newton Message Pads were around in 1993. Putting a phone on a PDA was the next obvious step, but it didn't result in a good product the way Microsoft did it or history would have played out differently and HTC wouldn't be failing.
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