Jonathan Ive on How Apple 'Nearly Shelved' the iPhone

[BornAgainApple]

I was more or less talking about the design of the OS and software within the 3, but the body is still up to par. As it sits, it's better. When it gets the JB update, it will sit on the throne unless Apple does something big with the iOS. Let me state that I'm a huge fan of the iOS. It's smooth, fast, and pretty. However, I've had the chance to fool around with JB and it's superior in just about everyway.

What I meant by using a smartphone was knowing how and using the 'ecosystem,' ect. Most tween iphone users you come across text, call, and play words with friends.



While I see and understand your argument, that is not true IMO. Check out JellyBean and see if you still think the same.

To my knowledge, 4.1 hasn't been rolled out yet to the masses. I have a friend with a GSIII running 4.0 who had GPS issues. He's technically more inclined than I am. He couldn't get it to work properly, so he took it back to VZW for another one. Same problem. Third time was the charm, but really...why three times for something that should work right out of the box?

My iPhone is jailbroken for 2 reasons only: SBSettings and Zephyr. I love those apps, but they're buggy, which is probably why Apple hasn't implemented them yet. If they can perfect them, then you'll probably see them in a future iOS update.

 

[celavato]

They should shelve this new stretched 4S design...

I think Apple will offer a new design in both a classic and long dimension as well as the 4S in classic and long, and the 4 classic free with contract. I don't think the 3GS will remain except perhaps in emerging markets.

 

[Rennir]

I guess you really can't argue with a someone that buys products because of how new they look instead of how they function and make their lives better.

I agree with appearance shouldn't be the only thing that matters, but you have to admit that it does matter to a lot of people. When people buy clothes, they're not just looking for functionality, but also how the clothes looks, what brand it is, color, etc. all of which have nothing to do with the functionality of the clothes, which is keeping you warm. Same thing with cars and lots of other consumer products.

That's not to say that people would be willing to buy a POS assuming the outside looked good, because that's definitely not true. But a product's appearance definitely weighs into whether or not consumers choose said product.

 

[Waxhead138]

It would be interesting to see where the smartphone world would be if iPhone never was.

Simply a guess...but based on the stability of smartphones available 5 years ago...RIM would probably be top dog. In this date / time thats insane, due to them failing to stay with the times...but in '06 and '07 they were the most stable smartphone OS outside of IOS, despite is limitations.

Windows Mobile was a joke back then. Symbian would probably have a much stronger US presence, and who knows about the evolution of Android. I think eventually (without competition aimed at the consumer) it still would have eventually blown up. Hell Palm might still be around if IOS never came along, although the hardware had issues.

Yeah I know it was a rhetorical question but it got me thinking

*Symbian....not sure what Nokias OS was back in '06 or '07. But thats what I'm referring to.

 

[slippyr4]

And we would have been stuck with this:

Image

FFS, irrespective of whether anybody copied anybody else, and who came up with the idea first, if you seriously believe that ONLY apple were capable of coming up with a phone design without a keyboard, and that phones would still be like the one in your picture if Apple hadn't shaken up the market, then you are a fool.

If apple had never entered the phone market then yes, the landscape would be different, but realistically most smartphones would be not entirely unlike they are now.

 

[balamw]

If it really is the stretched model, that wouldn't surprise me either.

I certainly would not be surprised if the stretched model is all there is either.

I guess we should know in about 6 weeks.

B

 

[slippyr4]

I guess you really can't argue with a someone that buys products because of how new they look instead of how they function and make their lives better.

Well I'd argue that you can put everyone who bought the first iPhone into that group.

Let's not forget just how bad it was:-

No 3G data
No video calling
No MMS support
No app store or native app support

Before the first iPhone, I had a nokia n95, and it had all of those features, and many more. The original iPhone was out of date before it was released.

The first iPhone started the ball rolling, but in the beginning that was a pretty duff ball. The iPhone 3G was, in many ways, the first proper iPhone.

 

[fSHAD]

The design ! phew !

iPhone kicks the GII, GIII when it comes to design ! cheap plastic crap !
inspired by nature

no offence android guys I am not talking about the OS !

 

[kdarling]

It would be interesting to see where the smartphone world would be if iPhone never was.

It would also be interesting to see what would've happened if Apple had used their original trackwheel based iPod-iPhone idea. Seems doubtful that many companies would've jumped on that bandwagon!

Even after Apple switched gears to a touchscreen, the world didn't implement (or drop) everything that Apple did. For examples:

• Major OSes did not drop the useful idea of having a dedicated Back button.
  
  
• Nor did they drop support for touch phones with optional keyboards and pointing devices.
  
  
• Even the stylus (in the far better form of an active pen) is making a minor comeback. Some things are just too useful to completely give up.
  
  
• While companies are starting to make some models with no memory expansion and/or no swappable battery, they still make other models that do. Again, useful features to many people.

 

[TimAlia]

Different ear and chin shapes needed adjustment? And yet all it takes to turn off the display when the proximity sensor is active is a palm, or the flat surface of a desk.

Let's see you make a successful proximity sensor. You big baby.

 

[samcraig]

To my knowledge, 4.1 hasn't been rolled out yet to the masses. I have a friend with a GSIII running 4.0 who had GPS issues. He's technically more inclined than I am. He couldn't get it to work properly, so he took it back to VZW for another one. Same problem. Third time was the charm, but really...why three times for something that should work right out of the box?

You should ask the same question to the people in the iPhone and iPad forums. Because last I checked - there are countless threads about people buying iPhones and iPads that don't "just work." And are on their 2, 3, 4, 5th device...

But really... why three or more times for something that should work right out fo the box, right?

 

[mdelvecchio]

We are going to find out just how gullible the buyers are, when this "new" model is introduced.
...
It will bolster Apple's ability to continue on the path of dictatorship, profit taking, and trickling out a few new features at each release. Then counting up every little change so they can make a dramatic claim like "200 new features"...

nice cloud of delusion. if buyers enjoy the new phone and all the features it offers, what exactly makes them "gullible"? you do realize that each design is not meant to incite apple-geeks to upgrade their existing handset once a year, right? because that isnt what normal people do. at all.

do you complain about laptops not looking radically different each year? how about cars? i dont. i buy the design i like.

as for 200 features -- thats Mountain Lion. and its not a lie if its true, is it?

 

[Rogifan]

"Make their lives better" you've got to be kidding... it's only a phone.

But people sure seem obsessed with what it will look like and if it doesn't look exactly like what they want they're going else where. Sure it's only a phone...

 

[mdelvecchio]

Or one of these :

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1257891/Samsung_unredacted_trial_brief.pdf

...were those not all designed after Apple changed the game w/ its design? apple made touchscreen phones ubiquitous. early Android designs looked like Blackberry clones, not iphone clones.

 

[gto55]

few days after the release of the leaked iphone photos which apparently don't seem to please many people, J. Ive intervenes by a curious coincidence in two interviews

 

[samcraig]

...were those not all designed after Apple changed the game w/ its design? apple made touchscreen phones ubiquitous. early Android designs looked like Blackberry clones, not iphone clones.

There were rectangular touch screen phones before the iPhone. And further - there were several phones already in production before the iPhone was announced.

Android is an OS that was designed to be platform agnostic. The fact that one form factor keeps getting sent all over the internet doesn't mean Android was going to be a BB like device or anything else. Unlike iOS - it wasn't designed for one type of device.

 

[KnightWRX]

...were those not all designed after Apple changed the game w/ its design? apple made touchscreen phones ubiquitous. early Android designs looked like Blackberry clones, not iphone clones.

Did you read the PDF ? Those are designs from 2006, Samsung has a december 2006 design registration to prove it, and those are prototypes for the F700.

Is reading the context and PDF so hard ?

And you have no idea what you're talking about with Android, simply again repeating the FUD spread around here. Android design never looked like Blackberry clones, since Blackberries are phones and Android is software.

 

[aerok]

...were those not all designed after Apple changed the game w/ its design? apple made touchscreen phones ubiquitous.

All the designs you see in the picture are from 2006.

early Android designs looked like Blackberry clones, not iphone clones.

Why do people post this like it was a confirmed fact, IT'S NOT! Just mindless speculations.

 

[mdelvecchio]

Sounds like an apologist response.

It's Apple, that brags about world class design and how important it is to their products. It's very obvious when you look at what they build. Design does matter, especially to your average consumer that has no clue about the rest.
...
Anyone who dismisses the importance of design to Apple has not been around very long.

anyone who doesnt realize that how things *work* is part of good *design* hasnt studied apple (or design) very closely. go rent Objectified.

 

[lifeinhd]

I don't know why everybody is so obsessed with an "all new design" for the iPhone. It is not simply a stretched 4S, this is an entirely new iPhone. All the current leaks suggest metal unibody construction, a 16:9 "retina" screen, a new docking system, relocated headphone jack, and improved speakers/mics. Other likely additions are in-cell touch panel technology, improved processor, larger battery, 4G LTE connectivity, improved camera, and possibly NFC capability. Put all this together and you're going to get a stronger, thinner, faster iPhone with a larger screen (that is still useable with one hand!). What more do you want? If Apple rounded the edges of this phone everybody would be amazed. We already had an iPhone with rounded edges 5 years ago. It's time to let it go. The iphone 4 and 4S (despite the same complaints last year) have sold incredibly well, and people love them. Once you've found a good design you stick with it until change is necessary/beneficial. Apple is not going to dump a good thing every year because Samsung or HTC etc can mold their plastic phones into an infinite number of shapes. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Here, here! I made a similar post when the "iPad 3" was rumored to be coming out and everyone was saying it'd be a "rehashed iPad 2." Except...

-Retina display
-4G
-Extra RAM? (unknown at the time)
-New processor
-Better cameras
-New case (okay, it's really the old case but a little thicker, so that counts as "new" imho )
-Siri support

And I would have thought this list was extensive enough for the "iPad 3" to be considered "new." But to most people, it isn't "new" if it doesn't look different so people can show off to their friends that they just dumped a pile of money into a device that will be obsolete in a year.

 

[mdelvecchio]

Did you read the PDF ?

no i didnt -- im not here to open PDFs and read 30+ pages of crap to get to your point. so try to be more clear in your points.

And you have no idea what you're talking about with Android, simply again repeating the FUD spread around here. Android design never looked like Blackberry clones, since Blackberries are phones and Android is software.

yes, i do. pre-iphone Google's Android OS was keyboard-driven and designed to be used on phones that looked & operated like Blackberry clones -- not capacitive touchscreens. read up, son:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3354239
http://obamapacman.com/2011/08/android-ui-rendering-akin-to-microsoft-windows-1-0/

sorry youre so mad, bro,

 

[kdarling]

Did you read the PDF ? Those are designs from 2006, Samsung has a december 2006 design registration to prove it, and those are prototypes for the F700.

Well, at least one was... the drawing in the lower right corner became:



Samsung also submitted internal 2006 designs for a touch interface:



Which is not surprising. Everyone was doing touch concepts in 2006. You should've seen some of the ones that came out of Japan and Korea during shows back then. I wish I'd kept photo copies. Everything from transparent screens, to flat screens with raised glass bumps where keys would be displayed, to pebble like phones with touch sensitive surfaces, to phones that came in pieces that you could magnetically click together to build the device you wished for the moment.

There are a lot of inventive designers out there, but few get to see their ideas become reality. That's the real thing that Apple did: bring known ideas to the market.

 

[mdelvecchio]

"Make their lives better" you've got to be kidding... it's only a phone.

not at all. the tools we use in life do indeed make our lives better. try building a house w/o a hammer or screwdriver. likewise try building your business w/o email.

tools matter.

 

[KnightWRX]

yes, i do. pre-iphone Google's Android OS was keyboard-driven and designed to be used on phones that looked & operated like Blackberry clones -- not capacitive touchscreens. read up, son:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3354239
http://obamapacman.com/2011/08/android-ui-rendering-akin-to-microsoft-windows-1-0/

sorry youre so mad, bro,

Sorry I'm not convinced by pro-Apple publications. Here, a little evidence for you :

http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

Android is software, it was never designed to be used on a single form factor of phones. The facts are against you and "Obamapacman" and "Macworld".

I'm not mad, but are you happy just repeating FUD without any evidence to back it up ? Are you happy that you have to ignore evidence to keep yourself from seeing the truth in the world ? If so, that is sad, not maddening.

 

[samcraig]

He's too busy to read the PDF. He'd rather be ignorant to the facts.

Sorry I'm not convinced by pro-Apple publications. Here, a little evidence for you :

http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

Android is software, it was never designed to be used on a single form factor of phones. The facts are against you and "Obamapacman" and "Macworld".

I'm not mad, but are you happy just repeating FUD without any evidence to back it up ? Are you happy that you have to ignore evidence to keep yourself from seeing the truth in the world ? If so, that is sad, not maddening.