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Original iPhone's First Four Reviewers Reminisce About Getting Their Hands on It for the First Time
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Why do I still feel Apple at Jobs time did 90% of the effort while TC Apple excells in milking & tanking ?
I mostly agree, my rod-shaped friend. The biggest complaint I have about TC is that quality control seems of less importance than it was under Jobs. If Steve was my boss I'd be scared ******** to make a mistake. Tim seems much less threatening. I wanna work for Timmy!
Agreed. As I recall, at the time AT&T was the only carrier that would agree to Jobs's demands, the biggest being that he controlled the firmware & no carrier bloat.
Again. For people who knew how to use it. It was fine. For the critical mass, there was a barrier to texting that Apple solved.
All I hear is blah blah blah....
Jobs and Cook were a partnership, they both rescued Apple from oblivion and built it up and that's why Jobs entrusted his company to him. BTW, there was 7 years between the Ipod and Iphone and another 2 year before it was a definite success.
To be able to invest money you got to make money. Cook's extreme ability to create an efficient supply chain is what allowed Apple to get those high margins and thus have money to invest.
In the 6 years since Jobs died, the Watch and Airpods alone are more successful than just about any other product anyone else has launched. Service revenues alone have grown massively under Cook.
It's time people start living in the present.
Phones had physical keyboards before iPhone. iPhone uses a virtual keyboard which emulates this. Like something on a BlackBerry or Sidekick. I know you know this but it makes your comment pointless ("for people who knew how to use it"). If you knew how to use a keyboard on an iPhone you knew how to use a BlackBerry. So yes... "texting on other phones being largely unusable" doesn't make any sense.
Man look.
I remember purchasing a 1 GB SCSI drive in 1990 or '91 for $300 for my Mac SE and happy that I got for such a good deal!
Are you sure it was 1990-1991, I think these drives would have been massively more expensive than that in 1991, unless it was liquidated or something and then it may makes sense.
What is particularly interesting was the minor improvements with each revision that seem so insignificant now. Considering other phones and platforms weren't even near the iPhone back then: copy and paste, 3G, third party apps, video recording, video conferencing, retina display. Today, the iPhone is so powerful, you can leave apps running in the background because of the amount of memory included. Watching Steve Jobs demonstrate a call conference, which sending a picture to Phil and listen music was pretty amazing 10 years ago on a device that size.
Think so. Purchased my SE used from a Kinko's in late '89. Goosed it up from 1 MB to 2.5 MB a little later. Had a two-floppy version...and I splurged for the drive. Maybe late 1991...because I transferred usage to my Performa 450 (LC III equivalent) when I bought that in late 1992.
Oh, and my first iPhone was the 4. Followed that up with a 4S (Steve passed) and I gave the 4 to my wife.
Oh, and my first iPhone was the 4. Followed that up with a 4S (Steve passed) and I gave the 4 to my wife.
I had the LG enV at the time which had a full QWERTY keyboard and a fairly functional browser. And the enV2 also had a 2MP camera, but it was released about a year after the iPhone. Still, I’ll say that I did not expect fast internet speeds or a decent camera in a phone at the time, and not many did. They were bonus features.
It is silly to compare it to the moon landing. The moon landing was Apollo v.11. A lot of missions preceded that "one small step for man". The iPhone was the first of its kind!
The original astronauts had to fight to get a window in their space capsule, and because of where it was placed Alan Shepard didn't even get to see stars. Ordinary jets and even propeller-powered aircraft had had windows for decades! We can all agree that the first space flight was seriously flawed. And that's a fact.
I had to import the first iPhone, because it would not be released here for another year with the 3G version 
and had to hack it, to get it to work on the local network.
The first time using it was like holding the future, and with the touchscreen I always thought it should be, not the matt pressure LCD screens at the time.
and having Google maps in your hand was just fantastic.
One of the biggest problems was using it in public, everybody wanted to see it and hold it
and most of my co-workers wanted the iPhone3G as soon as it came out, after seeing me using mine.
It was a bit the same with the first iPad, watching movies in the train would attract a lot of attention
and had to hack it, to get it to work on the local network.
The first time using it was like holding the future, and with the touchscreen I always thought it should be, not the matt pressure LCD screens at the time.
and having Google maps in your hand was just fantastic.
One of the biggest problems was using it in public, everybody wanted to see it and hold it
and most of my co-workers wanted the iPhone3G as soon as it came out, after seeing me using mine.
It was a bit the same with the first iPad, watching movies in the train would attract a lot of attention
I bought the first iPhone from AT&T a week before storage was doubled to 16GB. It was within the 10-day return period so I exchanged it (with 10% restocking fee). Kept using it until I bought the iPhone 5s. Still have them both. Now looking forward to iPhone 8.
I'll keep reiterating. I'm not talking about the keyboard. I'm talking about usability. Yes the blackberry was a great texting device. It was not the most straight forward to use.
If I remember correctly, the biggest "Awwwwwww!" of the first iPhone presentation , was the multitouch zoom-in on the gallery images. Now that was something no one has seen before.
On a second note, i came to Apple just at the iPhone4 , from Nokia N95 , which was a 'beast' at the time. I was gifted iPhone4 (my country didn't even sell iPhones till iP6) , and all I could say for days , probably months, was "Holy smokes!". And that's how Nokia died.
On a second note, i came to Apple just at the iPhone4 , from Nokia N95 , which was a 'beast' at the time. I was gifted iPhone4 (my country didn't even sell iPhones till iP6) , and all I could say for days , probably months, was "Holy smokes!". And that's how Nokia died.
Wait wait wait....This thread is giving me cognitive dissonance.
For the past few years there has been a lot of Apple and especially Tim Cook bashing on this and other Mac-centric sites. I have been guilty of some of that myself. Usually, at some point, someone brings up how, since Steve Jobs died, that innovation at Apple died with him.
But reading through this thread I find that the original IPhone, that wonderful Steve Job device, really wasn't all that. It had poor internet speeds and a crappy camera and a difficult to accurately type software keyboard and the apps weren't really anything special and that those apps crashed frequently. It also was offered only by one provider who had a less than stellar nationwide network and no pricing options.
In addition you couldn't copy and paste text or any other type of data or file and you couldn't open a PDF file. The list goes on: you couldn't record videos or sound, play flash animation, send text messages (SMS type text messages-I am assuming iMessages of some type existed), things that, according to posts, you COULD do on other devices.
I don't personally know about these flaws and omissions, Apple lost me with AT&T being the only provider. No AT&T coverage where I live then and it's still not very good today. I didn't buy my first iPhone until the 4s, when other network providers were allowed.
I did have a Droid about a year or two (guessing) after the iPhone release but the less said about it the better.
My point in this rambling diatribe is that the first iPhone wasn't perfect, other devices had some better tech, and it took a couple of years to get things mostly right. Most of which the Tim Cook Apple bashers- once again, this includes me- tend to ignore. The iPhone was revolutionary in its day- NOBODY else had a device that did everything that the iPhone did for at least a few years. Individual devices had things that they did better but no one covered the range of features that the iPhone did. Flaws and all.
Personally, my biggest complaint about the upcoming iPhone is its price. The rumored features sound good to great, and what I've seen and heard of IOS 11 I like.
iPhones have never been cheap, and I don't buy a new one every year. I will admit to being cautious and planning on waiting a few months to buy but I do plan on getting an iPhone 8 this year.
For the past few years there has been a lot of Apple and especially Tim Cook bashing on this and other Mac-centric sites. I have been guilty of some of that myself. Usually, at some point, someone brings up how, since Steve Jobs died, that innovation at Apple died with him.
But reading through this thread I find that the original IPhone, that wonderful Steve Job device, really wasn't all that. It had poor internet speeds and a crappy camera and a difficult to accurately type software keyboard and the apps weren't really anything special and that those apps crashed frequently. It also was offered only by one provider who had a less than stellar nationwide network and no pricing options.
In addition you couldn't copy and paste text or any other type of data or file and you couldn't open a PDF file. The list goes on: you couldn't record videos or sound, play flash animation, send text messages (SMS type text messages-I am assuming iMessages of some type existed), things that, according to posts, you COULD do on other devices.
I don't personally know about these flaws and omissions, Apple lost me with AT&T being the only provider. No AT&T coverage where I live then and it's still not very good today. I didn't buy my first iPhone until the 4s, when other network providers were allowed.
I did have a Droid about a year or two (guessing) after the iPhone release but the less said about it the better.
My point in this rambling diatribe is that the first iPhone wasn't perfect, other devices had some better tech, and it took a couple of years to get things mostly right. Most of which the Tim Cook Apple bashers- once again, this includes me- tend to ignore. The iPhone was revolutionary in its day- NOBODY else had a device that did everything that the iPhone did for at least a few years. Individual devices had things that they did better but no one covered the range of features that the iPhone did. Flaws and all.
Personally, my biggest complaint about the upcoming iPhone is its price. The rumored features sound good to great, and what I've seen and heard of IOS 11 I like.
iPhones have never been cheap, and I don't buy a new one every year. I will admit to being cautious and planning on waiting a few months to buy but I do plan on getting an iPhone 8 this year.
I just would like to thank Apple for the iPhone. It truely is an amazing product that has changed the world in ways few could ever imagined. Having the internet on the palm of your hands on such a convenient and easy to use interface was a game changer. I love my iPhone.
Whaha !
Apply a few metrics (percentage of patents realized, R&D expenditures versus realised innovations, immobile capital piled up) to revise your own blah-paganda.
Benchmark with more competitive industries (car, aerospace, pharmaceutical) and the number of new designs they come up with as a yearly average vs Apple's.
Then come back.
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You've gone from texting being largely unusable to blackberry being a great texting machine in 5 seconds flat. Similar sort of time that your tech knowledge reputation went to zero!!!
I guess context doesn't connect with you? The blackberry for its time was a great texting machine for those that could use it. However, the iPhone made it an easier and better process for the masses. In addition to that, texting on most other devices was atrocious. Got it?