this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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The thing is essentially a public dev kit. If you aren’t stupid rich and you can’t write it off on your taxes for business, it’s not worth picking up yet. And Apple knows that.
Give the tech time to mature. There were people who talked shit about the iPhone when it came out, and now we ALL use smartphones. I genuinely think AR (in a different form factor) will be a big deal. Possibly the thing to unseat smartphones, if manufacturers can start nailing transparent screens. But admittedly there are a few leaps in technology that will need to happen first.
I'm still talking shit about the iPhone. Where else do you see people using a glass keyboard? I don't care if a billion idiots like it. There is virtually no choice in the market, everything boils down to the lowest common denominator. We need open and reusable technology, not this proprietary throwaway shit that you can't maintain.
As somebody with big sweaty clumsy fingers, I actually liked mobile phones and software for them (J2ME) before touchscreens.
Those keyboards were hard to use, but understandably so due to size.
But why did they replace them with something even harder to use, even when at home sitting in a chair, I can't fathom.
I think the best mobile device I've seen is PSP Slim, if we imagine a similar phone, buttons on the right could probably be replaced with a phone-like numpad fit for text input, the arrows and the joystick were perfect.
I think you're attributing more grandeur to Apple's decisions than is warranted.
Apple's iPhone was not the first phone to use a touchscreen - that goes to IBM in the 90s. Apple did produce a PDA the same year with a touchscreen, though it used a stylus-based touchscreen. During that time touch tech was still developing. If you follow the overall evolution of touchscreens, Apple actually deployed its touchscreen phone about as early as they could - probably because every other company was also eyeing making one but were waiting until touchscreens were cheaper and more reliable.
It also was not the first smartphone. Again, that IBM phone with a touch screen also had e-mail capability, a calendar, and various other features, and phones being able to access the web and play games along with various PDA functions was almost standard as we got into the 2000s.
The touchscreen rectangle smartphone was already on the way - Apple just grabbed the bag first.
What Apple consistently does is act brashly by deploying a usually obvious future product before the tech is actually developed enough to fully support it. They then sell it at a stupidly high price which trims off who buys to mostly just futurists with rose-tinted glasses on. It's a very effective strategy to get credit for innovation and leading the future while avoiding bad PR, and it fools massive amounts of people.
Apple is a company that is insanely good at corporate strategy. In fact, if there's anything that Apple has truly pioneered, it's the modern predatory, anti-repair, designed obsolescence fashion-tech environment we currently see.
I had smartphones way before the iPhone but ok..
your reply is n=1, when op is clearly talking about mass adoption
Nokia s60 were mass adopted. Blackberrys were as well