this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Designing phone ui for fingers first. While there were many other touch phones, many of which could be used with your finger(especially if you were a hipster, you could modify them to be more finger friendly), their ui was primarily designed for stylus use. This is a huge point that basically defined the OS and app design for the next 15 years.
Making capacitive screen popular. Before iphones, almost all(all?) phones had resistive touch screen, which required you to actually push your finger on the screen to do stuff. This was fine with stylus, less fine with finger. Capacitive worked with the lightest touch, which gave a smoother user experience.
Made multitouch mainstream and a core part of touch interface. Again, older touchscreen phones were mostly made to be used with a stylus, so multitouch wouldnt make much sense.
It is important to note that one of the reasons apple succeeded was because nokia was too stubborn and late to adopt and promote touchscreen phones. Thats why while nokia was the phone bid dog of that day, users had turned to sony ericsson(SE) for their flagship, touchscreen phones.
And for 5 years before the iphone, people were using phones like the p800, that had a large touchscreen and even a removable keyboard for that full touchscreen experience. SE had taken nokia's symbian OS and made it more touch friendly. Nokia continued releasing super capable(great cameras, video, fm radio, etc) but non touchscreen phones or with a small touchscreen for years after that, allowing SE to dominate that market. For example nokia released the 6600, which was a great phone but didnt have a touchscreen and its screen was small in comparison to SE's touchscreen flagships.
The first iphone had a terrible camera and couldnt even film videos. Something that other "smart" phones could do for many years. The first iphone didnt have third party apps. Competitive smart phones had had apps for over a decade. The first iphone wasnt 3g, couldnt share stuff over bluetooth, etc. It was a pretty but pretty stupid phone in comparison to the competition.
But over time, apple kept improving, catching up and often surpassing competition in every aspect. I remember when iphones had shitty resolution and when apple caught up, they advertised it as retina display. Nowadays, iphones are the best or almost the best in everything. Now if only apple gave 120hz refresh on base iphones and a faster charging rate. And werent closed garden assholes.
The “fingers first” part is ironically why the Apple Pencil took so damned long to come to fruition. Steve Jobs outright refused to allow a stylus for the iPad, because his whole marketing thing with the early iPhones was that you didn’t need a stylus. So he refused to allow development of the Apple Pencil.
Then once he died, Apple quickly pivoted and began developing the Pencil, so they could start marketing the iPad towards digital artists. Because the company had recognized the large void in the digital art world years prior, but Jobs had refused to allow the Pencil the entire time. Once he was out of the way, the company’s leadership was free to begin development.
It’s notable because it was one of the first big examples of Apple veering away from Jobs’ wishes after his death. It proved that the company wasn’t going to simply remain in his shadow forever.
I remember the resistive touchscreens! My dad had bought a BlackBerry (oh man I miss them) for his business work and it had those screens. It definitely took work to get used to because my mom was using a Samsung Galaxy Y at the time... Smallest screen ever but that capacitive touch screen 🤌🏼.
As for the rest of your comment, the multi-touch was definitely insane. I can't find this anywhere atm but I remember reading that they introduced pinch to zoom, which is definitely a flex. Maybe not the first, but on capacitive smartphones, probably yes.
Are you the fabled "well-formatted paragraph guy" I was told about? 😂
The LG Prada was the first capacitive touch-screen phone. March 2007 release compared to iPhone's July 2007 release.
Samsung also fought a patent war with Apple when Apple sued Samsung for creating a similar phone to the iPhone in 2008. The court docs had examples of Samsung's first touchscreen phone.
Apple are very good at marketing and had a powerful personality that people worshiped (Jobs).
Spend 5 mins watching videos by Louis Rossman fixing Macbooks and you'll realise they are shitty products.
A couple months are irrelevant, obviously both phones were designed and released in a similar timetable. Lg prada wasnt a smart phone and didnt have multitouch.
And while many people have turned against modern iphones, i think modern iphones are the best phones on the market. I wouldnt even recommend an iphone from 10+ years ago but modern iphones have addressed almost all issues that i had.
They had
I am probably forgetting tons of other issues that i had with iphones over the years. And apple took all these weaknesses and not only caught up to the competition, but surpassed it and made then a key marketing point.
I actually bought samsung wave in 2010, which was the first phone with an oled screen. And it was great, apart from the limited app support, since it was running Bada, a samsung created android competitor. And since then, i refused to get an non oled screen phone. Once you go black, you cant go back.
I think that samsung makes the best android phones.
I dont care or know much about macbooks but it is obvious that Rossman has an agenda and keeps making "artificial outrage" videos(because they bring the views). From what little experience i have, it seems to me that expensive windows laptops fall apart more often than macbook pros. And all windows laptops have shit battery life, which is very important for many people.
Wooooah ok let me start by addressing your point RE: Macbooks. You may not know about them but if you do then you realise Apple's tech and entire business is questionable. I suggest you read more...
I'm talking about old Louis Roassman, not modern-day 'consumer champion' Louis. The guy ran a Youtube channel in the 2010s where he just fixed Macbooks in his shop. It was his day job as the owner of a laptop repair shop. He's a laptop repair guy by trade so I listen to him when it comes to laptop build quality.
I found him after my unibody Macbook Pro fell apart in 2011. It was the first model that came out in 08/09. He was very straight forward (no agenda) and showed how shitty the design & build of the Macbook was. Those issues still exist today!:
On my Macbook:
The two aboive combined so I basically had a panel, lid and frame all separated and snapped. It was fucking MESS. But Louis showed this was a common problem and I was shit out of luck.
NB: Not to mention the 3-4 hardware issues that cropped up during my ownership in just 3 years due to fucked up graphics chips and other hardware fuckups due to shoddy design. Apple tries REALLY fucking hard to avoid accepting hardware faults and recalls but I was plugged into all the Apple forums/communities and saw how often these things happened and every time without fail Apple would go blue in the face before accepting liability.
Remember the stupid as fuck iPhone aerial that stopped working if you were LEFT HANDED?! There was a gap in the edge of the case that if bridged with a hand would drop the signal to 0. Apples response? "Don't use it left-handed"
So what did I do?
I swore off Apple products. I noticed Louis was a fan of Lenovo laptops so I looked at what was available. I got a P51 and it's still going after 6 years.
Lenovo Thinkpads don't look sexy. They aren't 'unibody' aluminium. But holy shit - they're built like fucking tanks. I can poor a litre of water over the keyboard of my P51 and it'll still work cos it has built-in drainage holes. Do that to a Macbook - or hell try using a Macbook for more than a few years and it'll break and fall apart.
Apple products are NOT well built. They LOOK nice, but they're shitty engineering.
Design flaws exist in most laptops. But making videos about how shitty hp laptops are wont get many views and engagement.
I have had tons of windows laptops failing on me. And yes lenovo thinkpads are nice but they are different. Also i am not so sure they still are good, everything seems to have gone to shit. Very few laptops last over 5 years.
Or phones. Though lately, phones seem to have become more reliable. Then again phones have 0 moving parts and passive cooling, so not many mechanical things that can break.
Apple is an asshole company, i dont think many will dispute that. They go the extra mile to fuck you.
I have 0 apple products. But if Apple wasnt making the iphone, i would probably have had an iphone and i wouldnt even consider any other phone.
They look nice and they are better than other "nice looking" alternatives. High end hp, high end dell, even high end asus. Though dell and asus seem to have improved lately, hp i have no idea, i avoid them like plague.