[Const-me]

> That also wasn't well optimised for smaller screens touch screens, hence the requirement to use a stylus

The reason for the stylus wasn’t software. Capacitive touch screens didn’t really existed, at least not in consumer devices.

Apple did that. They haven’t invented that of course, acquired other company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks but it was them who brought the tech to mainstream in 2007.

[hnlmorg]

What you've posted is a very common misunderstanding of what happened in the mid 00s but unfortunately not at all accurate on any point you've raised.

Pre-capacitive touch screen technology worked perfectly fine with fingers. People had been using their fingers on kiosks and PDAs with infra red and resistive touch screens (respectively) for years before capacitive touch screen technology hit the market. In fact I personally had several PDAs from ~2000 onwards and would often use my fingers for simple operations (ie when precision wasn't required).

Ironically capacitive screens actually have greater limitations over capacitive screens in terms of general usability, as quoted on Wikipedia:

> Unlike a resistive touchscreen, some capacitive touchscreens cannot be used to detect a finger through electrically insulating material, such as gloves. This disadvantage especially affects usability in consumer electronics, such as touch tablet PCs and capacitive smartphones in cold weather when people may be wearing gloves. It can be overcome with a special capacitive stylus, or a special-application glove with an embroidered patch of conductive thread allowing electrical contact with the user's fingertip.

Also capacitive throws a fit if the surface gets wet, which resistive screens didn't, and resistive screens offer greater precision when used with a stylus.

Capacitive screens look nicer though (greater contrast etc). Which is why they eventually won out.

As for the whole finger-orientated UI thing, well that happened around the same time as capacitive screens hit the market (resistive screens can also be made to support multi-touch by the way) and thus would have happened with or without the invention of capacitive screens.

So no, the reason for the stylus wasn't a limitation of resistive touch screens. It was the UI and that would have changed regardless of the introduction of capacitive screens.

Also can we drop the bullshit that Apple were the inventors of multi-touch UIs. There were 3 companies working on the same technology in parallel: Apple, LG and Google. LG even beat Apple to market and then accused Apple of stealing their idea, much like Apple like to claim others did with the iPhone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

Suffice to say, the industry was changing and would have changed with or without Apple's involvement. They certainly were a big catalyst but where absolutely were not the only players in the game.

[Const-me]

> would often use my fingers for simple operations

Fingernails worked on my Palm m500, fingers did not.

> resistive screens offer greater precision when used with a stylus

I know but people weren't too happy with them. They need both hands, and easy to loose.

> It was the UI and that would have changed regardless of the introduction of capacitive screens

I have doubts. Resistive touch screens is very old tech, yet before the first iPhone came out they were mostly used by geeks and corporations.

> companies working on the same technology in parallel: Apple, LG and Google

When Apple launched the first iPhone, engineers at google working on Android decided to throw away half of what they already done and start over. They were building stuff like this https://www.androidcentral.com/look-back-google-sooner-first... and being smart people they have realized the product they were building became deprecated, overnight.

> LG even beat Apple to market

HTC did as well, look up "HTC Touch".

Apple is much better at selling their stuff. And I think they had better product too, despite not even a smartphone (app store launched much later). They did have good features like a unique data plan not available on any other phones, web browser which worked with normal web, and iTunes with all the music.

[hnlmorg]

> Fingernails worked on my Palm m500, fingers did not.

Palm m500 is a very early device. Resistive screens did get better. I remember the pain of using fingernails on early devices but the kinds of PDAs I fell in love with had were full colour screens running Windows CE / Mobile rather than monochrome displays and could run Tomb Raider in landscape mode with virtual buttons on the screen that were clearly only possible to use with your fingers. A version of it you can see here: https://youtu.be/ZJ1GR9mQamI?t=1070 -- but it looked and played soooooo much better on my device.

Bare in mind the first iPhone was released ~2007 vs ~2000 for the Palm m500. That's a lot of years for screens to improve.

> I know but people weren't too happy with them. They need both hands, and easy to loose.

That's true for the largest generalisation but you'd be surprised just how many people do prefer a stylus. I've even seen people use styluses with modern capacitive screens -- which I really don't get because those things are just as fat as fingers so always struck me as the worst of both worlds.

> I have doubts. Resistive touch screens is very old tech, yet before the first iPhone came out they were mostly used by geeks and corporations.

I know you're trying to disagree with me but you're actually making the same point: they were mainly used by geeks and corporations because the UIs were unattractive. The innovation of the iPhone wasn't the capacitive screen, it was the touch-centric interface. And as I said before, Apple weren't the only ones working on it. In fact they weren't even the first to market.

Go back and read some publications of the era, or design magazines. They all criticise Windows CE / Mobile for it's poor touch UI. It was a common known problem at the time. So much so that Microsoft had several attempts at fixing it. But nobody really knew how to do it right because it was a very young problem. Think of it like 80s home computer systems, how everyone was trying to get personal compact computers right and people largely fell on different implementations of the same idea before the computing landscape ended up with a duopoly of Macs and IBM-clones. That's largely how early smart phone and PDA UIs were too.

> Apple is much better at selling their stuff. And I think they had better product too, despite not even a smartphone (app store launched much later). They did have good features like a unique data plan not available on any other phones, web browser which worked with normal web, and iTunes with all the music.

Apple certainly are. But for what it's worth, smart phones and PDA's prior to the iPhone also supported a browser which worked with normal web (I'd used my one of my Windows CE PDA devices as a mobile internet terminal when on a road trip around Europe in the early to mid 00s). And Winamp ran on the thing so my main usage of my PDAs were music. I even had a compact flash microdrive (which still works actually) in an early model around the same time iPods also had microdrives.