“Apple is one of the most secretive companies on the planet, so the Apple-Samsung trial was fascinating in that it lifted the veil of secrecy that typically shrouds Apple’s operations. From marketing budgets to photos of never-before-seen iPhone prototypes, the evidence introduced at trial gave the world an unprecedented glimpse into the inner workings of Apple.” Lots of stuff we already knew, but Yoni Heisler ties it all together nicely.
There were ones without, but as tactile keyboards are genuinely more usable, even the larger screened devices tended to have flip / slid out keyboards.
And quite honestly, I still prefer that design to the modern touch-screen keyboards. I think the current design is a step forward for design but a step backwards for usability.
That’s not entirely true either. Plenty of PDAs and smart phones had decent browsers. Some of which even supported Flash.
However you expect some artistic embellishment when reading an article like this. so that aside, I really enjoyed this article. It was well written and insightful.
Edited 2012-09-14 15:13 UTC
I’m in no way trying to be nasty or sarcastic, because I respect you, but which PDAs/smart phones had decent browsers?
This is an honest question out of curiosity, because I’ve had to deal with a number of mobile devices that could browse and this was never a pleasant experience.
Opera Mobile was always pretty good from what I recall.
Thanks by the way mate
You’re welcome, anyone who has 11 iOS devices earns my respect!
IIRC my Nokia E90 had Opera and the rendering was okay, but the browsing experience wasn’t that good because it was slow, the screen was small and the pointer wasn’t ace either.
I’d say it was pretty accurate. Windows Phone’s browser was awful. The Opera browser some mobile devices used was okay, but fairly crippled. The browser in Maemo on the N800/N810 after they dropped Opera was Webkit based and supported Flash, but the device was so woefully underpowered that it wasn’t really very useful. The Firefox version that appeared towards the end of the N800’s life was sloooow. Most other mobile devices/phones at the time had either a horrible WAP/cHTML browser or the Netfront browser, which whilst fairly reasonable was not as good as anything that came after the iPhone. Mobile Safari shook up the mobile Browser world.
I don’t think phones were really powerful enough to provide a true desktop browsing experience (and to be honest, even know some budget handsets aren’t up to the media rich sites). But browsers were definitely getting better as hardware did. So when the iPhone was around, you could definitely have a decent browsing experience in Opera.
That said, I seem to recall that even in 2002, I could view most sites in IE – as crappy as the embedded version of IE was.
*know = now
Just to add, I will concede that the iPhone’s browser had the best interface at the time.
Today I say Android has the best browsing experience.
I love how I can zoom in to make small text readable, quick double tap and the page column rewraps so I only have to scroll vertically to read the content.
WP7 and iOS both fall way short, requiring panning left to right and vertically to read if you zoom in beyond natural column margins.
Personally, I find no difference between the way Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS handles zooming of text. They both do it slightly differently, but similarly enough for this to be a NOP for me. The legacy Android browser is no yardstick – it’s effectively obsolete on the Nexus 7, and requires quite a bit of subtle hackery to install.
The piece that the osnews article linsk to is an advertisement in disguise.
It is ahistorical in the sense that it disregards the real path that led to the current smartphone and the many designs that existed prior to Apple starting work on the iPhone. In other words, the article is just one more attempt to rewrite history so that the public can continue to believe in the “apple innovation” story.
Why? Because Apple now represents a significant share of the US^A's GDP and a cash-cow must be protected at all costs.
What actually came out of the trial is how many other companies had prior art for every little thing that Apple claims to have invented and how many other phones existed that looked and behaved much like what would become the iphone.
Yawn. Really – this tired old stuff? It entirely escapes me how anyone remotely interested in technology and global phone markets cannot see that the iPhone was a inflection point that changed everything in the smart phone market. If you don’t get that then you won’t get much else.
According to Jean-Louis Gassee and to Steve Wozniak Apple is no innovator.
Jean-Louis Gassee considers the iPhone a “re-invention” of the smartphone existing of a mix of already available techniques.
I guess mr. Swash those two know much much better then you do.
Jean-Louis recently said that Apple hasn’t invented anything, but what they are good at is taking existing ideas/technologies and making them user-friendly and fun to use. The GUI, media players, phones and tablets come to mind.
Apple doesn’t invent (which is very debatable), but it does innovate.
To my recollection Apple did two things that proved significant with the introduction of the iPhone: capacitance touch screen, and masterful marketing. Those are the unique things Apple dropped on the world. Other phones were already converging on the basic shape/style of the iPhone, though in the splash and massive campaigns since much of the earlier details have been all but forgotten by a few.
As they say, the winner writes the history. And like it or not, Apple is winning. Sure Android may “sell more” but Apple is the one making all the money off the market.
My first smart phone was an original Moto Droid that had a physical keyboard. That was part of the reason I finally got a Droid. Quite honestly the on-screen keyboard was much easier to use IMHO (after use). Now that my current Droid (Bionic) uses Swype I can’t imagine trying to go back to a physical keyboard!
Enjoyed the Article.
Sure there were other phones being tinkered about with, but Apple was willing to bet the farm on the iPhone and no other company had the guts to do something similar. Fortune favours the bold.