Because we were more engaged in the world around us. Yes, it was a lot more boring and information was scarcer. But we are all glued to our phones now.
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15 Features the Original iPhone Didn't Have When First Announced
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What's interesting is, since the 4s and iOS 6, I honestly can't say any feature has come out that I needed. The only thing I can even think of that I enjoy using is Face ID. But it certainly isn't a necessity. If they took that away, it would be annoying, but I'd quickly adjust to using passwords again (never cared for the finger print option).
I actually find the world more boring now. The internet, and having digital subscriptions and free things at the tips of your fingers at all times, has caused what use to be exciting (a new movie, record, video game etc.) to feel passe and just more background noise.
It's cliche, I know. But sometimes, less is more.
Why are people are so engaged with their devices (phones and tablets in particular) now? Perhaps people have always craved a sense of engagement and community, wanting to feel understood from the very beginning... and now that they can instantly connect with like-minded people from all over the world who share exactly their same views, they cling to that as part of their reality. People may feel validated with their technology, understood, more in touch with others... ideally speaking.
After all, we are here now, using our technology to talk about technology 🤪
Perhaps technologies like the iPhone and smartphones in particular are things that people have to grow out of, or at least put them in their proper place. Once people can see these things as tools as not as the "end-all" itself, they can start to look at the larger meaning and purpose in their lives, how they can really interact with and make a contribution to others.
Of course, there's something to be said for handheld games, well-crafted streaming content and online shopping from time to time...
Technology ideally gives you more options, more choices, and a better grasp of your place in this universe. Even printed books were made by technological means. I can see your point, though, in that having access to so much content can cause us to become satiated and unappreciative of how fortunate we really are. Not everyone in the world has access to all of this information, either. There is still inequality. Humanity is also still in its growing pains with information technology, I feel. We're still figuring out what to do with all of this, what to keep and what to throw away, what is truly necessary to live our lives. So many options, yet now we need to make decisions on what to do with our lives, our resources, our planet.
Dial-up the internet? I don't know anything about that. I never had to dial up for my mail or to access websites. Palm OS was reasonably good but EDGE was terrible in speed and the web browser was Stone Age but in those days that's how it was.
As for the SDK, it may have been less than ideal yet there were plenty of Apps available for users to install. I was happy to sync my mail and calendar with Outlook, take notes (with cut & paste), take pictures, listen to MP3s, make backups on the SD Card, be able to carry a spare battery, set and change the wallpaper, have favorite contacts on the home screen to name a few things Treo had long before iPhone existed. Treo was ahead of iPhone in many ways and they could have stayed that way. I personally found the physical keyboard much more usable than the virtual keyboard however it consumed valuable screen estate. Resistive touch screen was perfectly usable especially with the included stylus.
Sure, display resolution and camera was not so great and it could have been improved. Palm was ahead of the game but they lost the race. Their failure could be a good case study for business schools.
I never understood the lack of a front camera or MMS on the first iPhone, even my Nokia candy bar phone (2005) and my Windows CE smartphone (2007) both had a front facing camera for (carrier based) video calls, but if you called an iPhone, it just dropped the call.
The same for MMS.
The same for MMS.
It depends on what you needed. I stuck with my Windows smartphone until the 3GS turned up, although I did miss video calling on the 3GS.
The original one also lacked Exchange support, for example, so email was useless for many company accounts.
Terminal app, RDP support etc. also all came later.
From a pure UI and touchscreen point of view, it was way ahead of the competition, but for anyone used to feature or smartphones of the period, the first iPhone was a step back in functionality.
Ok for the rest, but copy/paste is an essential thing if you use your phone for anything besides making and receiving calls.
Copy and paste was such an egregious missing function it was literally like ?.
Nowadays iPhones are so feature reach and apple has a done a good job in making the newest iPhones with their new features feel familiar to previous versions.
Nowadays iPhones are so feature reach and apple has a done a good job in making the newest iPhones with their new features feel familiar to previous versions.
During the Keynote did Jobs say it will be available March 1 (in which case it was way late) or did he say July 1 (in which case it was early)?
The question is, and my feeling is, that for most part the old Apple hit the release date with the expected features.
Sure, there were a few misses, but I don't recall the misses in aggregate being major functionality, complete products, or as numerous.
The new Apple does not even compare. It is like marketing and engineering don't even talk anymore, or if they do, no one listens.
On the treo you were not persistently connected to the internet. Each time you wanted to use it, it had to go through a little connection routine, much like a dial-up modem. It would do so automatically at regular intervals to check for mail or what not if you had apps set up that needed to poll for data. And if you had CDMA it couldn’t handle simultaneous data and voice.
Aha, I see what you mean. Mind you I had my Treo in 2006, and in those days push mail and persistent connection probably wasn’t available yet.
I switched to iphone when 3GS was introduced and accessing the internet was no longer a pain anymore.
I used a third party mail client for ”push” mail (which was really just the phone dialing in to poll for mail at regular intervals). Wish I could remember the name of it - it was quite clever. I switched from the Treo (on sprint) to the original iphone. Prior to the tree I owned a samsung PalmOS flip-phone, and prior to that a weird qualcomm PalmOS phone, and I wrote and sold software for PalmOS, so I was pretty familiar with it by the time the original iPhone came out. The iPhone blew away the treo. It was missing some features, true, but the skeleton and framework were so much better, and it was so obvious those features would be coming real soon, so I didn’t worry about that.
I don't think we're wired to be able to handle the internet, and especially the internet in our pockets 24/7. That's the problem here. We are not biologically built for virtual communication in a primary sense. We need face-to-face interaction in order for our social structures to remain upright and functional. And you can see proof of this in how disgusting, disrespectful, mean and violent a lot of people are while interacting online. Before the internet, not many people would walk up to a complete stranger and tell them they were wrong, or call them names. Now? Now it's almost the rules of social engagement. Now, it's common place. And if you don't go along with that way of doing business, you're almost seen as an odd ball--which is just madness.
For all the good the internet has to offer, and it does have a lot of good to offer, I don't think it was worth it. Not yet anyway. There may come a time, like you said, where we all figure it out. But if things are going to continue to go down the road that they're currently on, I can't see the great experiment known as the internet ending well for anyone.
Lots of good points here. I think the question of whether the Internet is/was "worth it" depends on who you are, and what stage of your life you're at. Many facets of society now seem to be based on whether you have access to the Internet. It's almost like a prerequisite in some places to have or to use a smartphone, because of the "convenience" it offers.
You mentioned that you "can't see the great experiment known as the internet ending well for anyone." I think there are already people it has done something good for, and those it has not. It has allowed me to keep in touch with my elderly mother who lives a continent away, without the outlandish international calling costs that were the norm before VoIP. It has opened up new ways of working remotely for countless freelancers, and for people during the pandemic. I see the Internet now as more of a symbolic thing, the reflection of our need to interconnect as a species (however immature the technology is and how incomplete that virtual connectivity may be). Naturally, it also serves as an avenue to divide people as well. Again, that's also a reflection of who we are, what we carry with us.
Do we blame the Internet, or do we instead pin the blame on who are, our fledgling human nature?
I can see what you mean about the alarming trends in antisocial behavior online. I wouldn't fully agree that it's becoming a standard of behavior for humans on the whole in social engagement, though.
Before the Internet and e-mail, people used to send these quaint things called "letters." ? Sadly, not every letter that was ever sent throughout human history was uniformly courteous, well-behaved and respectful, I imagine.
Anyway, we are steering further and further off-course from the topic of this MacRumors thread/post, but to bring it back, maybe we can ask the question: what would need to happen for the iPhone as a product to evolve past these shortcomings?
Something that people like to easily forget.
The original iPhone, from its original launch on June 29, 2007, two it’s discontinuation on June 9, 2008, sold 6.1 million units.
It took them about 2 1/2 months to reach the 1 million mark.
In 2013, when the iPhone 5C and 5S launched, they sold 9 million units… in one weekend.
The 6 series sold in it’s lifetime over 220 million units.
I don't believe it can, and I believe you alluded to the reason why when you asked the question about whether or not the blame should fall on the shoulders of our humanity or the internet as an enabler. I can see we are at opposite ends of the spectrum here. You appear to have taken a slightly more optimistic viewpoint, and I've taken a cynical one. So we will probably disagree on the finer points. But I think, going back to the question of humanity, it's precisely that which makes things like smartphones and the internet a--likely--untenable situation. In short: we can't regulate ourselves enough to have that sort of power. So the real question is, do we continue barreling down this road with nothing but a wing and prayer, hoping that this all just magically self-corrects somehow? Sadly, that is a question most people don't even want to ask... which I suppose is answer enough.
Ah, perhaps so ? Time will tell for sure. Whatever we personally think, the fact is that millions upon millions of people are flocking to their smartphones each day, and it has become an "indispensable" part of life for most. Apple and other companies have profited off of this, as well they should, I suppose. In the end, it may be that all of this will be our undoing. Then again, it may be that all of this helps us to postpone or even avoid our "undoing," at least for now. Each of us has to continue personally regulating how we use this technology in our daily lives, unless of course we make the choice to cast it off altogether. Then the circle begins again, the question of how we can make our lives easier and more convenient, and inevitably we develop some kind of technology, which itself becomes part of a problem.
I'm old enough to remember reading liner notes. As a punk rock kind of kid, I found a lot of new bands thanks to the shout outs in those notes. ?
I miss the liner notes, too. Wonder if there isn't some way that Apple could bring the liner notes into Apple Music.