Hey, so I've only followed the iPhone since the 3G was introduced but the other day I was bored and decided to watch some old apple keynotes. It came to my attention that for over a year there was no app store. now to me the iPhone is all about the apps. My question is, what was the point of the iPhone before the app store and what was the iPhone like back then?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What was the iPhone back in the day?
- Thread starter macdaddy1991
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-gb; Nexus One Build/FRF50) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)
With an iPod.
iTzChasE said:
With an iPod.
well obviously, but for the price they were selling for I cant see what the draw would be for essentially just a touch screen phone with relatively small storage capacity for your music and movies.
4 gigs is still a lot for a phone today. i doubt the 16 gig one was "bad" also since we still get iphones with that much today. hell we still get 8.
anyhow it was poo unless jailbroken.
anyhow it was poo unless jailbroken.
You're talking about the 2g? I mean, it's only been 3 years since it came out. It's like asking what a Rev A MBP was like. Lower specs, but at the base, the same thing.
The big selling point for me was the mobile browser. It was unlike anything else on the market at the time.
I liked when Jobs announced it like that when it was introduced, it was pretty awesome.
Agreed. Safari was so much better than anything else on the market. Also, being able to sync to iTunes was pretty important as well.
I was in HS and had the only iPhone in my school. I could still remember my friend asking, "Is that an iPhone?!?!?!"
Indeed. Without that browser, the iPhone would've been far less interesting.
And sure enough, with browsers having caught up on other devices, users are more free to turn their eyes to other things such as customization, openness and choice of hardware and carriers.
Jobs was a bit optimistic when he said, "And we're at least five years ahead of anyone else". Or rather, when he repeated what his engineers were telling him.
Well back when it came out 3 years ago (which is pretty long for technology), there was really no other touch screen phone like it. Sure there were some touch screen phones, but they didn't recognize touch, so you had to physically push down on the screen so it could register the pressure of your finger. And still even today, most phones still aren't as responsive as the iPhone's touch screen, nor do they have multitouch. It seems trivial now, but the inertial scrolling for instance was pretty much amazing when it was demoed at the keynote. You should watch Steve Jobs's unveiling of it on YouTube, and you can hear the audience in awe when Steve scrolls through lists and maneuvers through the phone; it even seems silly to us now since it's so ubiquitous.
A lot of phones didn't have the "real" web experience either that the iPhone had (smartphones weren't nearly as popular as they are today). It was Apple's first touch-screen iPod; the iPod touch wasn't around yet. And the UI was entirely new. Many features like the following were uncommon at the time: cover-flow, visual voicemail, threaded SMS conversations, relatively good picture quality for a cellphone (people would be so surprised when I'd take out my iPhone to take a photo, and they saw the entire screen open up for the photo), Multitouch for photos and text, Google Maps, YouTube on a mobile device, and even the accelerometer (I remember playing Labyrinth on it for the first time was like magic to me). It was and still is such a sleek device. Just the thought of having the internet in your pocket was amazing. That's why people bought this phone back then.
A lot of phones didn't have the "real" web experience either that the iPhone had (smartphones weren't nearly as popular as they are today). It was Apple's first touch-screen iPod; the iPod touch wasn't around yet. And the UI was entirely new. Many features like the following were uncommon at the time: cover-flow, visual voicemail, threaded SMS conversations, relatively good picture quality for a cellphone (people would be so surprised when I'd take out my iPhone to take a photo, and they saw the entire screen open up for the photo), Multitouch for photos and text, Google Maps, YouTube on a mobile device, and even the accelerometer (I remember playing Labyrinth on it for the first time was like magic to me). It was and still is such a sleek device. Just the thought of having the internet in your pocket was amazing. That's why people bought this phone back then.
It was definitely for the "Internet communicator". I had the nokia n95 and it just sucked and so did everything else. Media could be done reasonably well. Also, no one had done a touch screen this well with the ability to adjust for future needs.
It seems the OP has completely forgotten the dark age before the iPhone. The iPhone was the first phone with a real web browser in it. It was the first phone with a usable touch screen. The iPhone had beautiful applications that no other phone could hold a candle to. It had an amazing music application and the best map client (not the best GPS client though).
We had the treo, then iPhone turned everything upside-down inside out and changed everything forever.
It got rid of the stylus and replaced it with the finger. Got rid of the keypads and gave us a full onscreen keyboard to touch.
It was multitouch, the ui, visual voicemail, safari, mail, ipod everything new and old done better than anyone had even imagined.
Every single touchscreen phone you see now exists only because of what apple did with the original iPhone. It was way ahead of it's time and it was what everyone wanted and needed if they knew it or not.
I never doubted it for a second, still have my original iPhone. Will never ever get rid of it.
Just like my first iPod from 2002.
They have been replaced but will always be kept.
It got rid of the stylus and replaced it with the finger. Got rid of the keypads and gave us a full onscreen keyboard to touch.
It was multitouch, the ui, visual voicemail, safari, mail, ipod everything new and old done better than anyone had even imagined.
Every single touchscreen phone you see now exists only because of what apple did with the original iPhone. It was way ahead of it's time and it was what everyone wanted and needed if they knew it or not.
I never doubted it for a second, still have my original iPhone. Will never ever get rid of it.
Just like my first iPod from 2002.
They have been replaced but will always be kept.
I didn't buy the first iPhone because it didn't have 3G, and I knew surfing the web on edge would have just pissed me off to no end.
I'm actually gonna go to youtube right now and watch the WWDC when the original iphone came out
I just did that. Last year's one with Phil is sooo boring.
If anything was ever magical, it was the original iPhone. A full web browser, a full iPod, a phone. No such thing ever existed and never done as well as iPhone. I was jumping up and down at work.
I cancelled my T-Mobile account (for $200), bought the full price 8gb ($600) and loved every second of it.
I cancelled my T-Mobile account (for $200), bought the full price 8gb ($600) and loved every second of it.
