15 Features the Original iPhone Didn't Have When First Announced

[BulkSlash]

While the lack of copy and paste was a pain, I believe the ethos was that anything you’d want to copy would be highlighted by iPhoneOS as a link, so instead of copying and pasting a phone number into the dialler you could just tap it to open it in the dialler or tap on an email address to start composing a mail, etc.

Of course that falls down when you want to quote a particular piece of text or chop up a URL before opening it in the browser, but it was still a very interesting idea for the time that just didn’t quite work in real world usage.

I do think the text selection in iOS needs some work as I’ve always found it quite flaky. It will jump around and select more than I wanted or it will select in the wrong direction for some reason or it won’t highlight a specific word if I double tap on it, etc. I don’t know why it’s got to be so finicky, but it’s always been like that since they first introduced it.

 

[cosmichobo]

The iPhone...

The key to Apple's trillion dollar success.

Remember that day, made all of the news here in Australia that Apple was entering the smart phone market. And the ceo of the largest Telco in Australia? Said to keep to your knitting. Ha.

 

[johnmed]

It was still way better than any other phone back then

I really disagree. I had a Nokia N95 or whatever that had GPS, 3G, could record video etc etc that was not as elegant but was far superior in every other respect.

I remember my friend heavily relying on WiFi hotspots with his 2G OG iPhone.

It’s why I didn’t jump on the Apple train til the iPhone 3GS. Then it became very convincing and I never looked back.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

I pulled out my original iPhone and played with it today. The first feature I missed? Moving the cursor with the space bar.

I can still move the cursor with the space bar in iOS 15? I use it almost daily. Just press and hold on the space bar briefly, and it should work fine.

 

[TComm]

It is really 16. You forgot to mention the infamous notch.

 

[bingeciren]

It was still way better than any other phone back then

I disagree. My Palm Treo had copy and paste, could take pictures, send and receive emails, surf the web on Edge (though it was a painful experience by today's standards), play mp3 music files, accept SD card for expansion which is still not possible on an iPhone, capable of running apps from various sources to name a few.

First iphone was way behind in many ways. It just had the touch sensitive display and no physical keyboard to differentiate it from the others. It was far from being ideal.

 

[jchap]

People would argue “no no no the entire system is based on macOS, but it’s not just slamming macOS onto iPhone and called it a day. It’s foundation is macOS not something written from scratch so it’s more stable yada yada yada”.

Interesting. I don’t really understand the underpinnings of iOS and how it relates to macOS, but I guess that now we can basically run apps on macOS that were made for iOS. Still, they’re two different things, macOS and iOS (and now the fork of iOS that they call iPadOS).

It’s not really clear to me, but is iOS (originally “iPhone OS”) just a version of OS X that’s stripped down for mobile devices? Or, was the core of OS X always part of iPhone OS, and they just chose not to take advantage of many of its components that might not be necessary for a mobile device like a phone?

 

[litmag01]

I pulled out my original iPhone and played with it today. The first feature I missed? Moving the cursor with the space bar.

Love the original Apple Bluetooth headset and dock!!

 

[DSG]

This is missing the oddest omission from the earliest versions of the OS - the inability to send SMSs to more than one person at a time.

 

[scheming]

Listed MMS but didn't list iMessage?

 

[litmag01]

It was still way better than any other phone back then

Definitely from an innovative feature point of view.

If you were among the lucky few who had to activate, troubleshoot, and service them you might have picked a flip phone. The device component failure rate was awe inspiring. The activation experience was draconian compared to other phones. It's a good thing they were so novel and groundbreaking.

 

[DSG]

Definitely from an innovative feature point of view.

If you were among the lucky few who had to activate, troubleshoot, and service them you might have picked a flip phone. The device component failure rate was awe inspiring. The activation experience was draconian compared to other phones. It's a good thing they were so novel and groundbreaking.

The silent mode switches on the 2G/3G iPhones seemed especially fragile - I think I had at least two of each for that reason alone.

 

[dukeblue219]

It was still by far the best mobile device ever made. Not even close, actually.

The touchscreen was great but the rest was junk. Other phones had 3G data, copy and paste, GPS devices did turn by turn, you couldn't record video or even send a picture message.

The OG iPhone was very weak in the marketplace. It wasn't until the 3GS that iPhone became a realistic choice for a lot of people.

 

[SirChristopher]

#justiceforcoverflow

 

[webkit]

no no no, an Iphone 3g, and multiple generations after, you got the phone for only $200 when you signed a 2 year contract. I guess it may have been different for original, but starting with the very next gen. it was only $200 with contract

I was specifically commenting about the original iPhone but yes, there would be cheaper iPhones in the coming years. I believe the low price point was with the 5c which could be had for as little as $99 with a 2-year AT&T contract.

 

[mashoutposse]

The touchscreen was great but the rest was junk. Other phones had 3G data, copy and paste, GPS devices did turn by turn, you couldn't record video or even send a picture message.

The OG iPhone was very weak in the marketplace. It wasn't until the 3GS that iPhone became a realistic choice for a lot of people.

The iPhone UI/UX was 5 years ahead of any handheld device available at the time. All of the core apps far surpassed anything else on other platforms. The desktop-level web browser absolutely destroyed everything else.

No one cared about those bulletpoints when you had to put up with garbage PalmOS/Windows Mobile/etc user-unfriendly interfaces loaded on primitive stylus-based hardware to "enjoy" them. Multitouch and a high-refresh UI that leveraged physics in its visual feedback to make you feel like you're interacting with actual tangible elements completely annihilated existing devices for user input.

Apple crushed everyone else by completely rethinking smartphone software, creating a lead so large that the iPhone could not even be classified with the others.

Same stupid "bulletpoint" thinking is why all of those competing platforms are long dead while we're here celebrating that 'deficient' first iPhone 14 years later.

 

[guzhogi]

I have to wonder how many of you were even born when the iPhone was first introduced. I feel old now…

 

[nt5672]

The question that needs asking today is, "How many features were released in the original iPhone Keynote, but not delivered in the first release?"

This tells the state of Apple today.

 

[nt5672]

How the hell did apple make a step back from Cover Flow is beyond me, but I wish we could have an iTunes visualizer in Apple Music ?

I think these days, for a lot of people, music is just background noise so they don't have to think too hard. With that there is no need to concentrate on the music, the artist, and the art behind the music.

 

[mashoutposse]

The question that needs asking today is, "How many features were released in the original iPhone Keynote, but not delivered in the first release?"

This tells the state of Apple today.

There was a nearly 7-month gap from the original iPhone keynote to product release. Most new Apple products today are made available within 2 weeks of the announcement.

 

[nebojsak]

What? i actually despised the alarm scroll wheel. Took forever just to make changes.
i have an old iPhone 6 Plus that i use as a second alarm and changing the time is just a chore.

Nothing like that, even with my old iPhone 5 with iOS 10 (which essentially bricked it) it worked like a charm.

That said, at least on iOS14, you can still scroll up and down to change your alarm time, just not as intuitive i guess as before.

This.

 

[BulkSlash]

It’s not really clear to me, but is iOS (originally “iPhone OS”) just a version of OS X that’s stripped down for mobile devices? Or, was the core of OS X always part of iPhone OS, and they just chose not to take advantage of many of its components that might not be necessary for a mobile device like a phone?

It was originally a stripped down version of OSX, so just the basic operating system features like process management, memory allocation, etc and some of the basic Cocoa libraries would have been brought across. Having every single OSX feature would have just taken up storage space and done nothing; e.g. back then they’d have seen no need for printer or keyboard handling as there wasn’t any use for that on a phone. Apple would then have created new UI components specifically for a phone, e.g. larger touch friendly buttons, toggles, etc.

 

[Zaft]

The first iPhone was basically just eye candy. It looked futuristic compared to the other smartphones. But it was very limited.

 

[aarond12]

The comment about Siri not being supported until the iPhone 4S is technically incorrect. Siri was available as a stand-alone app available on the iPhone 4. Then Apple decided to pull it from the App Store so iPhone 4 users couldn't have the same benefits as iPhone 4S users. (Yes, I'm STILL salty about that move.)

 

[aarond12]

I really disagree. I had a Nokia N95 or whatever that had GPS, 3G, could record video etc etc that was not as elegant but was far superior in every other respect.

I remember my friend heavily relying on WiFi hotspots with his 2G OG iPhone.

It’s why I didn’t jump on the Apple train til the iPhone 3GS. Then it became very convincing and I never looked back.

I was using Sony/Ericsson phones at the time. They also had phones with GPS, 3G, video recording, etc. What I liked about the Sony/Ericsson phones was the ability to install Java apps. This was before the iPhone had the ability to do the same. I waited to move to the iPhone until it had the ability to install apps and had the specialized apps I needed (that were available on the Sony/Ericsson phones).