I owned the first iPhone right when it came out. It was a revelation. It’s original cost was about the same as Windows Mobile devices off-contract, and it quickly got a price cut weeks into its launch, so it really wasn’t more expensive than any other Windows Mobile device or BlackBerry. And it was a revelation - blazing fast, did everything important the competition did (except enterprise support), and it truly was a giant leap. Nobody bought the iPhone and said, This thing sucks now, but just you wait… It was great from moment one.
Vision Pro is a bust. Tim Cook’s Apple is one where bean counters rule. Steve Jobs would never have shipped this. He would have felt like a dork with this heavy monstrosity without purpose, and he would have killed it. That’s what leadership and taste look like. Today’s Apple is not capable of bold things like the iPhone anymore. The model is the Apple Watch - put out an unusable piece of shit, and then iterate until it sells well.
You might be right about Apple under Tim Cook, and the Vision Pro, but this is revisionist history that I’ve seen repeatedly about the Vision Pro comparing it to the iPhone.
The original iPhone was many thing but certainly not blazing fast. And yea, many people said it not that great now but this is the future, most of the reviews if I remember correctly.
> “ We love the concept of the iPhone. It's extremely easy to use and almost entirely self-discoverable; the interface looks better than any other phone—smartphone or not—currently on the market, and it's just plain fun to use.”
> “However, we are not buying something else either; we plan to wait to see what software (and hardware) updates might come out for the iPhone in the near future. We believe that the iPhone is cool enough to wait for whatever might come out, and we have confidence that many of the nits we have picked can be fixed through a major software update.”
I remember very frequently switching back and forth between my iPhone and Android or Windows Mobile devices.
I owned one shortly after launch day. It was absolutely blazing fast, especially compared with the Moto Q I had just come from. Not the mobile internet speed, of course, the speed of the interface. It was completely smooth and fast unlike any other phone at the time.
The Moto Q was particularly slow, I had one. Not a great comparison imo.
The interface was buttery smooth, everything else was ok especially before the App Store. Once you had third-party apps I remember being disappointed. The 3GS was fast, the original was not.
Regardless most of the comment, including that bit imo, is complete revisionism. Almost every review of the original iPhone talks about the imperfection and promise of it.
Uh, it’s revisionism to say that third party apps were slow, and therefore the iPhone was slow, when the iPhone was out for an entire year before the App Store launched. I’m talking about the original iPhone at launch, not capability that was added a year later. I don’t care what the reviews said, I had one and experienced it, after several years of owning other phones. The reviews also moaned loudly about the software keyboard, which I thought was great on day one. It’s not revisionism that I (and lots of other people) have a different opinion of the iPhone launch than you do.
You really have no clue, if you had owned one you would know how much faster to use it was than pretty much all the competition in practice. Maybe it was beaten on some benchmarks or whatever but it is largely irrelevant and its exactly what people wish Apples would go back to...
Yup. It was one of those truly magical devices that leap frogged everything else. People who dispute that must not have actually used it when it came out.
Sure Jobs was a legend but I don't think Tim Cook is doing a bad job at all - under whose leadership Apple came up with Airpods which quickly became a cultural icon, and the M series Apple Silicon.
Both were great moves under Cook. But great writers need great editors, and Cook is not a great editor. It takes tremendous fortitude to kill an iteration of a device before its launch, and Jobs would have done so without hesitation, as he has done many times before. And honestly, I’m down on Apple right now for its truly awful rent-seeking approach to technology, thinking it has a right to collect a fee on digital transactions just because you use the device they made (and already paid handsomely for).
This thing is a farce, as you said, it lacks taste and purpose like most of the stuff of Cook's Apple.
And as an Apple Watch owner (2 models over 5 years), I can attest that in many ways it is still a piece of shit and in fact for what is the only relevant use case (sports) Apple has no proper cohesive approach and makes very little investment. In fact, they try to push their garbage subscription on you.
For the price it is sold at, the Apple Watch is a piece of shit, the price of the SE should be the price of the standard model basically...
Anyway, I don't understand how people are so delusional about the iPhone history but I guess this is Stockholm syndrome trying to defend Apple on everything. Reality is that all the products they made since the iPhone are "meh" at best and not exactly groundbreaking especially when you consider prices...
Yeah, Apple Watch is still a piece of shit. I’m on my third since launch, its functionality is basically nothing for me except telling the time and buzzing way too often for alerts I don’t care about.
Vision Pro is a bust. Tim Cook’s Apple is one where bean counters rule. Steve Jobs would never have shipped this. He would have felt like a dork with this heavy monstrosity without purpose, and he would have killed it. That’s what leadership and taste look like. Today’s Apple is not capable of bold things like the iPhone anymore. The model is the Apple Watch - put out an unusable piece of shit, and then iterate until it sells well.