[erikpukinskis]

There is no such thing as a UI layer. UI and function are inextricably linked.

For example, see iPhone's voicemail. Or the touch screen. Or the app store. None of those things could have been executed by UI teams at any other device manufacturer at the time.

[taneq]

Only when you're talking about software, which is arguably the "UI layer" of a physical computing device. Hardware needs actual things which do the things, independent of interface.

[2bitencryption]

when I was watching the keynote live, and Jobs swiped his finger to scroll, I audibly gasped.

[enjo]

Palm OS apps were using swipe to scroll for several years before that. As far back as at least 2002.

That doesn't take away from what Apple did. They really took all of the best ideas (and in many cases hired the engineers who made them in the first place) and put them into one incredibly tight and delightful package. Just about every individual feature can be traced to Palm, Symbian, or a host of other systems... but the magic is making the whole thing work.

Still, it's important to remember that the iPhone was largely a logical evolution more than something invented by Apple wholesale. The iPhone was not the first touch screen slate phone that I ever saw FWIW. That honor belongs to an internal project at Nokia (based on Series 60) that died under it's own engineering weight.

Which again is meant as a compliment to Apple. They actually were able to execute on the thing where others failed.

[ralfd]

>> when I was watching the keynote live, and Jobs swiped his finger to scroll, I audibly gasped.

> Palm OS apps were using swipe to scroll for several years before that. As far back as at least 2002.

I don't know how good Palm OS was at that time, but the contrast between the iPhone and the rest of the industry was blinding 2007:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMzg70MIZCo

[dkonofalski]

That is seriously laughable how bad that is. The parent to your comment either doesn't remember what things were like prior to the iPhone or they're intentionally ignoring the differences.

[robertlagrant]

The only new thing was a capacitive touchscreen, which allowed more responsiveness to a touch input. It just came along at the right time.

[lmm]

That wasn't even new, it's just that no other manufacturer dared to put out a phone at $600 (that's with contract, single carrier exclusive).

[dragontamer]

Capacitive screens were less responsive than resistive screens.

The difference was that you used your physical finger instead of a stylus. Personally speaking, I preferred resistive screens for their responsiveness and accuracy.

The capacitive screen was needed for "pinch to zoom" and other gestures of the modern era. The delay in the UI compared to resistive screens (as well as the higher-CPU time required for processing) turned out to be a smaller deal than multi-touch technology.

[piyush_soni]

Is there some more information on that? I believed so far (or the industry made me believe) that capacitive screens were much faster than the resistive ones.

[dragontamer]

I don't have like, hard tested data. But the delay is enough that experience was all I needed to convince me.

Nintendo DS / 3DS and Wii U are all resistive screens. I also have experience with resistive screens of Palm Pilot and Palm phones of the early 2000s. And all of those were more "responsive" than a 2007-era iPhone, despite the iPhone's significantly higher processing power.

Play a serious game like Monster Hunter (very timing intensive) and compare it to a serious timing-intensive game on a capacitive screen (I know I've seen people play Marvel vs Capcom 2 on an iPhone emulator...). The lag and delay is noticeable even in the modern era.

But people wanted multi-touch pinch to zoom. Capacitive sensing also requires a microcontroller to literally "charge up" the screen over and over.

When your finger is on the screen, it "charges up slower" (because your finger changes the capacitance at that location). Innately, that "charge and discharge" cycle requires a measurement over time.

And to make sure that power isn't wasted, only one part of the screen is often tested (there are grids and stuff that then calculate where the fingers or multiple-fingers are located). So innately, there's a delay as the "scan-lines" of the sensors test each point of the screen.

Resistive screens instantly tell you where the stylus is without any such delay or processing. So it just makes sense.

[amiga-workbench]

I don't have any direct links, but the latency on processing touch input from a capacitive display can be as high as 40ms, remember there is a lot of filtering going on and spurious crap that has to be filtered out.

Think how crazy the trackpad goes on a cheap laptop when you plug in a knock-off power supply with poor power conditioning.

[thaumasiotes]

The app store already existed for Blackberries at the time.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with voicemail.

[bluthru]

The iPhone was the first phone with visual voicemail.

[72deluxe]

Sorry to be completely lost but what is "visual voicemail"? This is an odd term - almost as daft as "visual BASIC"

[intoverflow2]

Instead of calling a number and listening to messages one by one you have an inbox and can play/delete them using a UI.

[macintux]

I think we've gotten so used to it we forget just how awful it used to be.

[Tsiklon]

it still is... not every network is willing to pay for the back end to support it.

[72deluxe]

Well I've never had that on Android here in the UK. I still have to ring my EE voicemail and listen to messages one by one. Thanks for the info.