Interesting how he was incorrect though. In another 4 years, the original iPhone will be 10 years old, and while he was correct that it is not usable anymore, it will still go down in history as the phone that started the smartphone revolution. The same way the iPad revitalized the tablet market and the iPod revolutionized the portable music market.
Wow ... delusional!
The iPhone was LATE in the smartphone revolution.
Symbian S60/UIQ/EPOC ... Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition, BlackBerry all created the revolution, song its praises very well long before Apple entered the foray ... in fact THEY'RE the REASON Apple entered into the market! Ever wonder WHY the iPad was developed first yet announced and shipped several years LATER?! Hmm.
Took iPhone 3 yrs to get basic PIM right ... going by your statement I've quoted above I highly doubt you know the P.I.M. acronym.
The iPhone brought on the evolution of the smartphone revolution ...
unifying: proper media consumption, good pictures (though SonyEricsson matched this for years! before and after; Nokia included and STILL reigns in this field), and mobile music and unified application delivery, along with showing manufacturers the falsehood of carrier branding!!
The iphone did NOT bring REAL web browsing like Jobs stated in the original iPhone announcment. Notice why he chose that particular and unpopular business Nokia S60 "E61" device? It's because it featured WebKit browsing ... created by Apple and a Google employee to create KTHML WebKit. Actually the Nokia N80 S60 2nd Edition device was the VERY first smartphone/phone to have a webkit based browser ... Nokia called it "nokia browser".
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I think most people don't realize that few ancient buildings that survive to the present day did so in anything close to their original form, or that many buildings fell for reasons that had nothing do with their architectural qualities. All architecture goes through periods where it viewed as obsolete, or it is simply in the way of something else. The result is more often than not alteration or demolition. Describing survival as an accident of history is appropriate, particularly when we are referring to ancient buildings. The concept of deliberate preservation is a modern one. It didn't occur to anyone until the middle of the 19th century.
Art is a somewhat different matter, but what I was saying about art is that its frame of reference changes. Most art was not created to be displayed in museums. It was created for other purposes (ecclesiastical, mainly), to be seen in a different context.
The Medici family... money makes power, and power makes right. A pretty close approximation to the way Gates is regarded today. I am not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation. If you've ever heard Melissa Gates talk about the foundation's efforts you will recognize that she's a lightweight who gets to espouse her limited wisdom in front of an audience only because of the money Bill made. Yet they get to bend health and education policies to their agenda. A good thing? Not in my book.
I don't think Steve was necessarily wrong with the layers analogy, I note only that he was leaving something out. He was being somewhat self-serving in dismissing everything he'd done previously, primarily (as I see it) because at that time he wasn't doing it anymore. In particular, he described the Mac as "nearly obsolete." This was three years before he returned to Apple, where (lo and behold) he did not treat the Mac as obsolete. And here were are, nearly 20 years later, and the Mac is stronger than ever.
That was Steve was doing his reality-bending trick. A master magician at work. Buckets of respect for him. It was a great talent, but it's still a trick.
He stated the "Macintosh" was obsolete .. not the Mac.
semantics of course but maybe he was honest and serious because he saw Desktop Publishing as a thing to common, and that Workstations - the purpose for being that is NeXT to replace that when he returned to Apple:
24 PowerMac G3's sourcing video content in real time shown off.
XServes announced and shown off in similar fashion,
Power Mac G5 debuted with applomb in a BOMB and now the NEW MAC PRO.
on "Macintosh" exists ... just Mac ... since he's now cool grown up and taking charge.