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Steve Jobs Once Tossed the Original iPhone Across a Room to Impress Journalists

That track wheel is really a trackpad with software , something that was done way before Apple, looks for circular movements tho nobody thought about taking it further like everything Apple dose and what Jobs was good at spotting and why Apple doesn’t invents but it improves on existing tech and ideas and takes them to a whole higher level and we all 🤦 so simple why didn’t we think of that
 
cosmichobo said:
I'm not blaming iPhone here... But - the same features have also brought about the social media storm that's changed all Western cultures. Before the mainstream simplicity of iPhone, something like Facebook would never have become as popular as it has done, along with Insta and all the others.

Reading today about Facebook's understanding that anger is a great motivator to bring its users back again and again, inciting them, and thus - earning more ad revenue... I'm really not sure what the future holds for that arena.
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This isn't new though per se. Anger (and fear) have long been known as motivators in media consumption. Just look at The Weather Channel. You'd think every front coming through was going to blow your house down. And obviously, certain...ahem...other outlets have been stoking outrage for decades at this point. And quite successfully, tragically.

I mean, yes. Obviously the iPhone and smartphones in general put/pushed that stuff into your pocket, and face, with ubiquity. Turbocharged as it were. I guess I agree with you in that I don't blame the iPhone. It was just the next conduit for stuff that'd been going on for a very long time. But it certainly amplified and magnified things to a degree I don't think many people saw coming.
 
I remember seeing this and was shocked and amazed ! I bought stock in this company 6 moths later. The rest is history.
 
The first iPhone was okay as far as hardware goes, but I wonder how many people remember that it was app challenged. It took a few years before there were enough apps created to make it worth buying. The same with the first iPad. It took years for enough iPhone apps to be converted for the larger screen to be useful on the iPad. So both were only half-assed decent releases that took a while to be useful on a meaningful scale. Apple also introduced the first iPod Touch around the time of the first iPhone, but they failed to open the app store to it for many, many months, rendering it an almost useless but expensive device. That is what I remember about Steve. He would take the last nickel from a starving person, but heaven forbid he would ever do things customers asked for unless it was HIS stinking idea.
 
w5jck said:
The first iPhone was okay as far as hardware goes, but I wonder how many people remember that it was app challenged. It took a few years before there were enough apps created to make it worth buying. The same with the first iPad. It took years for enough iPhone apps to be converted for the larger screen to be useful on the iPad. So both were only half-assed decent releases that took a while to be useful on a meaningful scale. Apple also introduced the first iPod Touch around the time of the first iPhone, but they failed to open the app store to it for many, many months, rendering it an almost useless but expensive device. That is what I remember about Steve. He would take the last nickel from a starving person, but heaven forbid he would ever do things customers asked for unless it was HIS stinking idea.
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They were not created to cater to an app market, apps weren't the primary focus on launch. Everything was ran off web links initially. The big draw for the original iphone was to have everything (phone, camera, web browser, music player, notes, weather service, and photo library) in your pocket with a nice UI. It was intuitive at the time, it's become much more complicated as its capabilities have increased. Customers didn't know what they wanted at the initial release because a device like it did not exist, though BB was close. Once the iphone released everyone else scrambled to develop a competing product, he tapped into a market they didn't know existed, and it took them a while to catch up. Everyone except google tanked. Then Apple got complacent living on past success and got passed up technology wise, I still don't think android has as intuitive of an interface (it's purely opinion for anyone though).

It is known he was very eccentric and had an attitude, doesn't that describe most eccentrics? What have you created on the same scale and magnitude?
 
Miss that guy!

And the times when keynotes were fun, inspiring, brilliant and really ALIVE.
Today it’s a puppet show.

But good to get a reminder why Apple once were so inspiring, and what Steve and Apple inspired me into on other planes too ❣️🙏
 
chucker23n1 said:
Yeah, he probably knew what he was doing, though. It's a glass front and aluminum back. (Assuming this prototype wasn't one of the early ones with a plastic front.)

We once had a Panasonic salesperson who proudly threw one of their tablets against a wall. In our building. Worked fine, because that was part of the sales pitch — those things are ugly as sin, but boy can they take a beating.



Why? The adverse effects for kids are vastly overstated. Oddly, the "they won't get outside!" argument never comes up with reading books.
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What the hell? How are you replying to me? I never posted on this thread.
 
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Elon Musk tried to do something like that when he unveiled the cybertruck, and failed rather spectacularly.
 
Malus120 said:
I was going to make a different point, but THIS is actually the way more interesting story. It's actually hard not to understate just how far behind Japan not only the US but the entire WORLD was when it came to mobile phones/communications when the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Phones that were more mobile personal computers with advanced email & messaging? Check. 3G (which the iPhone wouldn't get for another year)? Check. Mobile music player, rudimentary video playback and even TV tuning, check. Competent (for a phone) Cameras (3MP+)? Check. Mobile Payments (which wouldn't come to iPhone/see widespread US adoption until 2014!)? Check. Mobile gaming? Check. Push notifications for email/messaging? Check. Coming to Japan (from the US) in the early - mid aughts was literally like being transported into an alternate future of mobile phone technology.

What's even more astonishing is that Apple, initially missing so many features these phones had, managed to absolutely crush the domestic phone market in Japan after just a few short years, and to this day holds majority marketshare here (52.6% in 2020 according to IDC), while most Japanese phone manufacturers now don't even crack double digits in their home market.

The magnitude of the failure by Japanese companies to translate their technological leadership into marketshare overseas, or even the ability to maintain market supremacy at home was and still a striking/colossal failure of imagination/business management on their part, and a testament to just how amazing Apple truly was under Steve.



While I don't completely disagree with this, I think it disregards the importance of just how revolutionary the software stack/multitouch interface were at the time. Looking at the Japanese market, Apple demonstrated that you can have all the features in the world, but if you're UI/software stack is poor, you're likely to have the rug pulled out by a competitor that can create a device people actually want to use. Steve may have initially been wrong about a few things (the App Store most prominently,) but he got the most important parts of the initial release right and was willing to have his mind changed on the rest. Oh, and he was also a master salesman, the reality distortion field was real.

I miss Steve's Apple. It wasn't perfect but the vision, passion, simplicity, and salesmanship Steve brought to/enabled at Apple (along with his ability to balance conflicting personalities and not let any of them dominate too heavily) is something I really hope Apple can regain/refocus on at some point. The Apple of today may be profitable, but I doubt it could pull off the kind of coup Steve's Apple did on the Japanese phone manufacturers...
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The problem with most Japanese technology, to this day, is the design, and proprietary nature of everything. Their phones only work in Japan. Their payments, only work in Japan, and so on and so on.

Whereas the US/Europe models, work all over the world, including Japan. Payments are based on PayPass which works pretty much everywhere, unlike Japan's FeliCa based solution, etc. etc.
 
sudo-sandwich said:
Cause most of us don't care about Apple maximizing profits, we care about them making great new products.
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I understand. However, I maintain that an unhealthy company can’t make great products, especially not over time. “Iterative upgrade” is another way of saying refinement. Being able to practice refinement is a luxury earned through success.
 
henzpwnapple said:
And Tim successfully split 1 device into so many different versions and names - and claimed them to be "redesigned", "reinvented", or "redefined". Tim shall just be honest and combine all these 3 braggy words to "reused" when his team talks about product innovation.
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Yeah, people really seemed to not take to having an option for a larger iPhone. 🙄
 
DeepIn2U said:
Including Microsoft!

anyone recall the macintosh and how that propelled Microsoft (their DOS wasn’t ready but they did an increíble deal with IBM that I’m sure IBM regretted for decades.
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The reverse is also true. Without MS Apple would also be gone.
 
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cmaier said:
Nope. And how many people did that?

Just because crazy people do crazy things doesn’t mean that the iPhone is somehow a bad thing.
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I didn't say that the iPhone was a bad thing. I'm saying that people can sometimes go to great lengths to do things they shouldn't.
 
sudo-sandwich said:
Cause most of us don't care about Apple maximizing profits, we care about them making great new products.
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And you don’t think those two things are related? Apple has not increased their profit margins but rather the amount of things they sell to people who believe the products are worth the price. People need to get out of the hate-filled MacRumours bubble and see the real world.

Apple still make products people want.
 
I was talking to someone the other day and they said Steve Jobs actually died of HIV aids not pancreatic cancer. Any truth to this? They said the documents to show proof are online. Even includes his SSN in the documents. I guess it doesn't matter because he has been gone for a long time now. Maybe just rumors.
 
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