Over 5 years, has the iPhone made progress?

[cynics]

A lot of people will walk into the cell phone store with the mind set that they are going to get the best android phone, the best windows phone or the best iPhone.

The other manufactures have to continually one up there android or windows competition. So competition forces them to progress faster.

I think we are at the point where other manufactures are pulling away. The nature progression of the iPhone is going to look like they are copying other manufactures.

 

[Zcott]

The only progress it has really made is retina display and app store. Those two are game-changers.

 

[maflynn]

The only progress it has really made is retina display and app store. Those two are game-changers.

They were game changers. The old adage still applies, that's great but have you done for me now?

How long is apple going to rely on the retina display and app store when the competition has added and continues to add their own game changing technology.

On second thought I think siri has the potential to be a game changer. It seemed to hit a few bumps in the road but its potential is there.

 

[TL24]

I'd say a dual-core A5 along with THE best camera in the business is a great progress! iOS is simple and great to use, not up to par with ICS but I don't need all that fancy stuff. It basically comes down to preference and my preference is the iPhone 4S. This coming from a guy who's used Android for years!

 

[Big Dawg 23]

Yes the iPhone has made progress. As a former Windows, Blackberry and Android phone, all of them have pluses and minuses. iPhone may not have have 4.52' or 4.65' screens, but many folks do not want that. Keep in mind the large the screen the harder strain on the battery. Yes iOS 5 has some battery glitches, however use a Android phone like the Galaxy S2(Any Variation) and you will see what I mean.

Apple opts to make sure newer technology is more refined before proceeding. Look at Windows, they are just now getting to LTE. While I do think Apple did make a poor choice by not moving to LTE on iPhone 4S, I do understand, but HSPA+ not being there is a bad plan.

Apple camera's on the iPhone 4 and 4S have lead to a huge jump in improvement. The iPhone 4S camera to me is still the best out there. You have APP options and attachments like Owle Bubbo.

In the end, the changes from iPhone 1 to iPhone 4S is very significant, but so has the rest of the industry. Google has said the smartphone is what is now because of Apple.

 

[DeathChill]

Pioneered? No. Marketed to he masses? Yes. Prior to the iphone, smartphones were not marketed to the general consumer. They were intended for business customers. At the time the iphone launched it was considerably less capable than several other smartphones that had already been on the market for quite some time. I wouldn't say they pioneered anything. What they did was successfully market to a knew target demo.

I am having a really hard time believing that you truly believe this. You honestly believe Apple didn't completely turn the smartphone market on its head with the introduction of the iPhone? I know people say a lot of Apple's success is marketing but even the most devoted Android/Windows Phone/WebOS people admit that Apple radically changed the smartphone market.

 

[cynics]

The camera is pretty impressive. I think it will be the best for a while.

Apples retina display makes a great looking display but LCD is a power hungry tech and it's nothing all that innovative. They are going to need to come up with something if they go with a bigger display I'd think.

 

[mysterioustko]

I criticize Apple all the time here, and while you are completely correct about them having a less capable phone and overall featureset than say, Symbian, Blackberry, etc, it was not just that marketing that made them successful. It was their innovation of a completely new user experience that allowed people to finally have an incredibly easy to use computer in their pocket, no matter how incapable it was/is.

They definitely deserve their sales through the years, even if my old Nokia E Series could do more. Nokia and the rest should have seen this coming.

I somewhat agree with you. My point though, was that they did not pioneer the smartphone, which I think we both agree on. However addressing what you said about what drove the sales. I don't think the user experience really is what drove the sales. A couple years before the iphone came out I was using a Qtek 9100 (HTC) and it did pretty much everything at that time. People used to always ask me to play with my phone and asked me how they could get one and where I got it from. I imported my phone so most people weren't interested in doing that because of cost. I used to always say that whatever company figures out that smartphones should be marketed to the general public and not just business customers is going to make a killing. I said that because with all the features (I used to play NES roms, watch movies, full web browsing, etc) it could have easily been marketed as something more along the lines of an entertainment device. Apple saw that opportunity and jumped on it. For the most part it was the first smartphone marketed to the average cell phone customer and people ate it up.

In a way... It caused smartphones to become a integral part of many many many people's daily lives. Millions of apps sold. A billion helpful ways to use our phones.

But when comparing to Android and claiming Google moved faster than Apple... I don't know if I'd agree with that. All of these operating systems have big flaws. For example, Android STILL isn't as smooth as the iPhone, bookmark syncing wash't added until ICS which basically no devices actually have, no devices get updates, battery life has been horrible...

Then we have the iPhone - bad notifications until iOS 5, small screen, still very restricted and still not as close to a normal computer as it should be.

Idk, the whole smartphone era is pretty nice. Flawed and slow, but I'd rather have it than not.

Google definitely moves at a faster rate than Apple. Examples: Voice controls have been present on Android for 2 years while Apple just included Siri...and it's still a beta. Apple just started including some cloud integration, Google has been using the cloud for a couple years now. There are more examples but I think you get my point.

Whether the bar was artificially set that low or not (for the record it probably was) is irrelevant, it has still progressed a lot, and still has a lot of progress to make before it catches up to rival mobile OSes. In fact I don't think it will ever match the rivals because the simplicity that apple places so much importance on seriously hampers progress.

I agree with you. I don't think they place as much importance on the device being as capable as comparable devices. They butter their bread based on the simplicity of the platform, and that works for them. I think the simplicity of their platform is their biggest strength but also their biggest weakness. I would buy an iphone for my grandparents because it is simple and straightforward and there's nothing for them to do to the phone when they first boot it up. On the other hand, I would not use an iphone as my daily driver due to it's many limitations and simplicity. The same thing that is their biggest strength (simplicity) is the same reason I will not use one as my day to day device. I like to be in control of my device and Apple does not allow that. I'll put it this way, you can take 10 random people who own iphones, and if you look at their phones, they're all going to be the same (not counting jailbroken devices). Whereas, if you take 10 different android users, their phones are all going to be set up differently based on their usage patterns. My phone's set up is radically different than my mother's, and he's is going to be set up radically different than a teenagers, and so on and so forth.

Android and wp7 phones have an advantage. The use of multiple designers and manufacturers so with so many people creating new phones trying to one up the competition those phones have produced some new designs.

Add in the openness of android, HTC, Samsung, and the like have the ability to push the envelope further. This is less of an advantage in wp7 since MS keeps the design pretty locked down

I think apple has improved and made progress, but the interface while very intuitive is sagging under the ability of a modern phone. I think with much more powerful phones the UI needs to be updated, but thats just me

I agree. I see the iOS platform in its present state as being stagnated. This is why I didn't really see very much benefit to them using the A5 processor, and why I shake my head when hearing the rumors of them moving to a quad core processor. There's is nothing in iOS that really requires any major amount of computing power. Apps don't run concurrently, and many functions of the device are limited. I see no real point to updating the hardware if the software is going to continue to lag behind. When they do that, it really takes away the benefit of new hardware (for the most part).

 

[interrobang]

Pioneered? No. Marketed to he masses? Yes. Prior to the iphone, smartphones were not marketed to the general consumer. They were intended for business customers. At the time the iphone launched it was considerably less capable than several other smartphones that had already been on the market for quite some time. I wouldn't say they pioneered anything. What they did was successfully market to a knew target demo.

What a ludicrous bit of revisionist history. RIM and Palm tried desperately to market their smartphones to a consumer audience. That's what the BlackBerry Pearl was designed for.

They failed because the devices were poorly designed. Tiny screens, web browsers that couldn't display anything remotely like a web page, clumsy UIs with mini-button (or worse, stylus) navigation. They were marketed to the masses, but not designed or built for the masses.

 

[mysterioustko]

A lot of people will walk into the cell phone store with the mind set that they are going to get the best android phone, the best windows phone or the best iPhone.

The other manufactures have to continually one up there android or windows competition. So competition forces them to progress faster.

I think we are at the point where other manufactures are pulling away. The nature progression of the iPhone is going to look like they are copying other manufactures.

I don't think it will matter if it looks like Apple is copying or not. The average consumer doesn't know which phone had what feature first. They just know what's in front of them at the store. They aren't really going to be concerned with what manufacturer did it first. They are just going to want the best phone they can get on the platform they wind up choosing.

They were game changers. The old adage still applies, that's great but have you done for me now?

How long is apple going to rely on the retina display and app store when the competition has added and continues to add their own game changing technology.

Totally agree!

I am having a really hard time believing that you truly believe this. You honestly believe Apple didn't completely turn the smartphone market on its head with the introduction of the iPhone? I know people say a lot of Apple's success is marketing but even the most devoted Android/Windows Phone/WebOS people admit that Apple radically changed the smartphone market.

I think you're confusing changing and pioneered. Yes they changed the cell phone market by marketing smartphones to the average consumer, whereas prior to that smartphones were marketed almost solely to business customers. Them marketing to the average consumer as a phone/entertainment device definitely changed the smartphone market. However, that doesn't mean they pioneered the smartphone. There's a big difference in changing the market landscape and pioneering a device. Company's like HP and HTC did a lot more to pioneer the smartphone market than Apple. I had a Qtek 9100 (manufactured by HTC) 3 years before the iphone hit the market. That phone did more than the iphone but it was only marketed to business consumers. The iphone came along and marketed a very dumbed down version (I don't mean that in an insulting way, I say it because it was severely less capable than other smartphones) of a smartphone to the general public instead of just business consumers. This changed the entire landscape of the smartphone industry, but make no mistake smartphones had already been pioneered.

----------

What a ludicrous bit of revisionist history. RIM and Palm tried desperately to market their smartphones to a consumer audience. That's what the BlackBerry Pearl was designed for.

They failed because the devices were poorly designed. Tiny screens, web browsers that couldn't display anything remotely like a web page, clumsy UIs with mini-button (or worse, stylus) navigation. They were marketed to the masses, but not designed or built for the masses.

RIM and Palm were not marketing to the masses at the time the iphone launched. That was not their target demo. The majority of blackberries and Palm devices were sold as business phones to business users, and were sold business to business primarily. That was their bread and butter. You never did once see an advertisement for the qtek 9100 and any other wizard variants. They did not advertise them. At that time, HTC didn't even place their brand on their phones. They allowed them to be rebranded and sold business to business (this was around 2004). Prior to that you didn't see ipaqs and pocket pc's being marketed to the general public. There was never a superbowl commercial advertising pocket pc's during that time period. You didn't see ipaqs (which were considered business phones) advertised during commercial breaks while watching a basketball game. That did not happen.

 

[Hastings101]

From Windows Mobile to Windows Phone ( I know, technically not the same thing) and Android 1.0 to 4.0 have been huge advances in UI and features, taking those original systems from useless to outstanding.

iPhone OS 1 to iOS5, there have been tons of under the hood improvements and a few enduser features added. The UI could definitely use an update to compete with modern Windows Phone and Android, but it's far better than Symbian or Blackberry.

So no, in my opinion the iPhone hasn't made as much progress as the competition, but Apple started with a pretty solid OS compared to WM and Android so it really hasn't needed to.

 

[greygray]

Absolutely IMO. However, more features are added with every software update to further refine iOS and the iPhone on its own. It's 5 years and the competition has yet to produce something as neat as the current ecosystem. It may be restrictive to some, but iOS is indeed one of the main propellers of the iPhone's progress over the years.

 

[DeathChill]

mysterioustko:

Maybe I am not understanding you correctly, but are you trying to say the main difference between the iPhone and previous smartphones is who they marketed to? If so, that really doesn't make any sense.

 

[mysterioustko]

mysterioustko:

Maybe I am not understanding you correctly, but are you trying to say the main difference between the iPhone and previous smartphones is who they marketed to? If so, that really doesn't make any sense.

No that's not what I was saying. My original response was around the beginning of the thread so I think a lot of the point I was making was lost among the thread. Someone said Apple pioneered the smartphone, I'm stating that they did not. What Apple did is market the smartphone to a new demographic and thus changed the landscape of the smartphone market and who a smartphone consumer is. They did not pioneer the smartphone they made them mainstream.

 

[Consultant]

It has progressed a hell of a lot in five years, and I say that as someone who has a lot of criticism for the iPhone

The first iPhone could only run one app at a time, couldn't send picture messages, send messages to more than one person at a time, and it couldn't forward messages either. It was actually crazy how many features it lacked.

The first phone concentrated on multi-touch, usable touchscreen, usable touchscreen keyboard, intuitive design, etc. instead of features count.

Other phones might have "features" but you need to look through a 100 page, poorly made manual to figure it out.

PS. You could send MMS for FREE through email on the first iPhone. Basically, Apple tried to push people to use the free email (instead of paying for mobile internet price but only get text / MMS)

 

[mysterioustko]

The first phone concentrated on multi-touch, usable touchscreen, usable touchscreen keyboard, intuitive design, etc. instead of features count.

Other phones might have "features" but you need to look through a 100 page, poorly made manual to figure it out.

That's a cop out. I'd expect a $600 phone to be able to send a picture message. It isn't like that's some ridiculous luxury feature, that's a basic feature of a phone and had been for quite some time. When the iphone launched it was ostensibly lacking in many different areas. There's no way around that.

 

[Ksizzle9]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I'd say a dual-core A5 along with THE best camera in the business is a great progress! iOS is simple and great to use, not up to par with ICS but I don't need all that fancy stuff. It basically comes down to preference and my preference is the iPhone 4S. This coming from a guy who's used Android for years!

I agree. People DO NOT give the iPhones new processor and camera enough credit. Nor the flash memory it uses instead of the SD slot(which would still be nice to have for xtra space) these are things we complain about, but these things on the iPhone are second to none as well.

Take the A5, sure it doesn't have the highest clock speed, but even at almost half the speed of some CPU's it's still faster than most. Then there is the GPU, it's hands down the best available on the market. No questions asked. Compare any benchmarks, it wins. You can run FPS test or something like that or browsermark, it beats them all steadily. Sure you can argue this: oh, I'll root and ROM my android and over lock it! Whatever. I've been an avid android Phan since the original Droid dropped 3 years ago. But all those "just for show" specs like 1.5ghz CPU blah blah blah, don't mean anything if it's still missing some small things like fluidity. I've used the bionic, Razr, and own a GNex, they are GREAT phones. But they have little quirks. I'll name one for instance: the reboot issue that almost all androids have had. I can count on 1 finger how many times my iPhone has rebooted for no reason, actually I dont have to count, it just doesnt do that.

I've left a lot out bc I'm typing from my phone. But, there is also this: the app store. Sure you can't measure a smartphone soley on its apps, but there are plenty of iOS apps that simply can't, and won't be matched by androids apps due to the fact that there is no real approval system for androids apps.

Also you will see things such as I see on my GNex, the multitouch issue. If you own one and say you haven't seen it, you are one of two things. Lucky or lying.

Lastly, there is battery life. I didn't have grey luck on my first 4S so I figured I'd switch it out considering how much I paid for it. But the new one I've got is right on par with my i4. Sure
It's not a Razr Marx, but the battery is one third the size so it isn't expected to be. With that said, it easily outlast my GNex, even when I have 4G turned off. As I've said, android has some DAMN good options available. Some with more OVERALL features. But all lack the polish of ios. IMHO.

 

[interrobang]

RIM and Palm were not marketing to the masses at the time the iphone launched.

False.

That was not their target demo.

Half true; it was one of their target demographics

The majority of blackberries and Palm devices were sold as business phones to business users, and were sold business to business primarily.

True

That was their bread and butter.

True

You never did once see an advertisement for the qtek 9100 and any other wizard variants. They did not advertise them. At that time, HTC didn't even place their brand on their phones. They allowed them to be rebranded and sold business to business (this was around 2004). Prior to that you didn't see ipaqs and pocket pc's being marketed to the general public. There was never a superbowl commercial advertising pocket pc's during that time period. You didn't see ipaqs (which were considered business phones) advertised during commercial breaks while watching a basketball game. That did not happen.

Nice strawmen. HTC and HP were not big players in the consumer or business phone markets back then. Qtek has never been a big player in any market, ever.

The big players in the smartphone market, pre-iPhone, were RIM, RIM, RIM, Palm, RIM, and RIM. And both RIM and Palm were trying desperately to re-tool their devices and marketing strategy to fit the consumer market before Apple ever showed up.

 

[Consultant]

That's a cop out. I'd expect a $600 phone to be able to send a picture message. It isn't like that's some ridiculous luxury feature, that's a basic feature of a phone and had been for quite some time. When the iphone launched it was ostensibly lacking in many different areas. There's no way around that.

Perhaps you don't understand that people can send and receive MMS on 2007 iPhone for free.

Feature was there but not well known to the haters.

 

[scaredpoet]

Pioneered? No. Marketed to he masses? Yes. Prior to the iphone, smartphones were not marketed to the general consumer. They were intended for business customers. At the time the iphone launched it was considerably less capable than several other smartphones that had already been on the market for quite some time. I wouldn't say they pioneered anything. What they did was successfully market to a knew target demo.

I disagree with this, a lot. It was a lot more than just mass marketing that Apple brought the smartphone. What they did was they turned the smartphone from a balky, failure-prone, buggy device to a device that, while it didn't do anything groundbreaking, it did what it did very well. It does it consistently, and it does it simply, and it does it right. And that's what made more people willing to use it.

The first iPhone and iOS 1.0 was absolutely less functional than most smartphones out there, and I remember when it was first announced, I was one of its biggest detractors. Up to then I had been the proud owner of various Palm devices (since the PalmPilot 1000 and up to the Treo 750), Windows Mobile (up to the Samsung Blackjack) and Blackberry (going as far back as the RIM 950 and leading up to the Blackberry 8703c).

7 months later, I ended up getting an iPhone of my own. Not because it could do more than the other smartphones that I owned, but because it wasn't something that I would grow frustrated with, because it wasn't doing what it said it would do.

Every previous smartphone I owned prior had over-promised and under-delivered. I had Blackberries that silently deleted whole swaths of e-mails without my knowledge or consent. My Treo 700p, just to single one model of many out, had this knack for rebooting at least twice a day even when I wasn't doing anything with it, and then also for momentous events like receiving a text message. And my windows mobile phones would Bluescreen... that was a REAL kick in the pants.

So, it was common for me to swap phones every 3-6 months. I'd go from Palm to Blackberry to Windows, and back, over and over, losing a day or two of productivity each time I switched, not to mention the countless e-mail and contacts I would lose due to glitch x, y or z.

Now, I only upgrade about once a year. And I can definitely say that I've never lost an e-mail, contact info or calendar date due to a hardware or software issues since I've being using iOS devices.

What Apple did was make sure the basics worked well before moving on to other things. Combine with a UI that worked well, I think THAT is what made it so successful, and what brought smartphones to the masses... not just the marketing.

And we can see that now with how the market is turning out. The Android developers sorta get it, but it's the thing that gives them their market share (hardware diversity) that is also their greatest weakness in that Android is still very rough around the edges. Microsoft is getting it, NOW, and Windows Phone is a much better product than previous iterations were. Palm ignored the situation until it was too late to make up for old sins. And RIM is feeling that heat now.

 

[ericg301]

Perhaps you don't understand that people can send and receive MMS on 2007 iPhone for free.

Feature was there but not well known to the haters.

not in the US...until 2009

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10344775-233.html

 

[Calidude]

Whether the bar was artificially set that low or not (for the record it probably was) is irrelevant, it has still progressed a lot, and still has a lot of progress to make before it catches up to rival mobile OSes. In fact I don't think it will ever match the rivals because the simplicity that apple places so much importance on seriously hampers progress.

Um, no.

It is the artificial lowering of the bar that has made the progress irrelevant. Not the other way around.

 

[mysterioustko]

I disagree with this, a lot. It was a lot more than just mass marketing that Apple brought the smartphone. What they did was they turned the smartphone from a balky, failure-prone, buggy device to a device that, while it didn't do anything groundbreaking, it did what it did very well. It does it consistently, and it does it simply, and it does it right. And that's what made more people willing to use it.

The first iPhone and iOS 1.0 was absolutely less functional than most smartphones out there, and I remember when it was first announced, I was one of its biggest detractors. Up to then I had been the proud owner of various Palm devices (since the PalmPilot 1000 and up to the Treo 750), Windows Mobile (up to the Samsung Blackjack) and Blackberry (going as far back as the RIM 950 and leading up to the Blackberry 8703c).

7 months later, I ended up getting an iPhone of my own. Not because it could do more than the other smartphones that I owned, but because it wasn't something that I would grow frustrated with, because it wasn't doing what it said it would do.

Every previous smartphone I owned prior had over-promised and under-delivered. I had Blackberries that silently deleted whole swaths of e-mails without my knowledge or consent. My Treo 700p, just to single one model of many out, had this knack for rebooting at least twice a day even when I wasn't doing anything with it, and then also for momentous events like receiving a text message. And my windows mobile phones would Bluescreen... that was a REAL kick in the pants.

So, it was common for me to swap phones every 3-6 months. I'd go from Palm to Blackberry to Windows, and back, over and over, losing a day or two of productivity each time I switched, not to mention the countless e-mail and contacts I would lose due to glitch x, y or z.

Now, I only upgrade about once a year. And I can definitely say that I've never lost an e-mail, contact info or calendar date due to a hardware or software issues since I've being using iOS devices.

What Apple did was make sure the basics worked well before moving on to other things. Combine with a UI that worked well, I think THAT is what made it so successful, and what brought smartphones to the masses... not just the marketing.

And we can see that now with how the market is turning out. The Android developers sorta get it, but it's the thing that gives them their market share (hardware diversity) that is also their greatest weakness in that Android is still very rough around the edges. Microsoft is getting it, NOW, and Windows Phone is a much better product than previous iterations were. Palm ignored the situation until it was too late to make up for old sins. And RIM is feeling that heat now.

Then we agree, they did not pioneer anything. As for the other things you stated, I agree somewhat, though I had several windows mobile phone prior to the iphone coming to the market and I had no issues with those ( I never had the blue screen issue you mentioned). Yes the UI on them were not as user friendly but it wasn't complex either, it was basically windows on a phone. All in all, I think the end result was that Apple was able to take advantage of the fact that nobody was marketing smartphones to the general consumer. That is what led to the change in smartphone market landscape. Consumer's level of expectation has changed. Phones generally are now expected to have smart features, whereas before most people didn't even know much about a smartphone...now they demand it.

----------

HTC and HP were not big players in the consumer or business phone markets back then. Qtek has never been a big player in any market, ever.

The big players in the smartphone market, pre-iPhone, were RIM, RIM, RIM, Palm, RIM, and RIM. And both RIM and Palm were trying desperately to re-tool their devices and marketing strategy to fit the consumer market before Apple ever showed up.

I didn't mention RIM because I'm not just talking about simply business phones, I'm talking about smartphones, and what RIM had at that time hardly constituted a smartphone..especially when compared to the windows mobile offerings. HTC and HP were both big players in the smartphone world at that time (though HTC flew under the radar since they didn't brand their devices). BTW, I didn't say Qtek was a major player. QTEK DIDN'T MAKE ANYTHING, they were rebranded HTC phones...same thing with the dopod brand and several others. HP was pushing ipaqs and htc was pushing several different models. Palm was there too obviously. My point in all that was simply that Apply did not pioneer smartphones as someone erroneously stated earlier in the thread.

 

[applephanatic]

To answer this question frankly, YES. The iPhone was the pioneer of the "21st" smartphone industry. Apple implemented a user friendly touchscreen into the phone, they introduced the multi touch. Hardware wise, because of the ever expanding Android market, their hardware might not be as up to date, however and this is a BIG however, this is not an essential for them. The iPhone 4s is sporting dual core processor. I remember my first computer, a iBook G4 with a processor clocked at 1.25 GHZ single core. Seeing a dual core in a phone is pretty amazing. Phone manufactures like samsung and motorola are constantly realeasing faster phones with bigger CPU, because they have to in order to compete in the Android environment. iOS is a closed operating system that is MEANT to function on the iOS devices. The software and hardware are made for each other. Android is open source and any company can create a fancy UI, throw it into whatever phone they want with any specs they find fitting. This is why often times you will find that Android runs sluggish. The OS is not always optimized for the Hardware. I have played with the SGS2 and the Razr and both are great phones, fast and IMP they look nice, however those are premium device, just like the iPhone. The issue people run into is thinking that if they buy an Android for $80 it will perform as well as a iPhone 4S or even iPhone 4.

Software wise. Apple has implemented some of the most ground breaking technologies seen on a mobile phone.
It is true, that not all of iOS's features are awesome, before iOS 5, the notifications were a PITA if you asked me, constant popups and the little red badges were not only annoying but were an eye sore. Notification center fixed that, now I have run into people that argue notification center is a direct copy of Android's notification system. To these people, I say Android has also copied Apple. However once again and this is just my opinion, when Apple "steals" a system feature from another software, they add their own little twist and often times (like notification center) make it better.

Are there things that Apple could improve on with iOS, of course there is! However the operating system is only five years old. As time moves foreword, so will the OS. We are still at the very beginning of the technological revolution. As time progresses iOS, Android, WP7 and other Mobile OS, will advance and become even better.
iOS and the iPhone are where they need to be and will continue to do so as the OS moves through the years.

 

[mysterioustko]

To answer this question frankly, YES. The iPhone was the pioneer of the "21st" smartphone industry. Apple implemented a user friendly touchscreen into the phone, they introduced the multi touch.

Apple did not pioneer the smartphone industry. They made smartphones accepted in mainstream consumer markets. BTW Apple was not the first with multi touch.

Software wise. Apple has implemented some of the most ground breaking technologies seen on a mobile phone.

I beg to differ. I haven't seen Apple bring anything to market truly groundbreaking.

It is true, that not all of iOS's features are awesome, before iOS 5, the notifications were a PITA if you asked me, constant popups and the little red badges were not only annoying but were an eye sore. Notification center fixed that, now I have run into people that argue notification center is a direct copy of Android's notification system. To these people, I say Android has also copied Apple. However once again and this is just my opinion, when Apple "steals" a system feature from another software, they add their own little twist and often times (like notification center) make it better.

I beg to differ here too. The iOS notification center isn't better as it is lacking in its primary function...NOTIFYING. There is no static notification to alert you that you have things in the notification center to address. In other words if you don't address a notification right away, you have to remember to go back to the notification center later. I'm sorry but that's not better at all. It's better than you what they had before, but it isn't better than other platforms.