[ROTMetro]

Huh? The iPhone 1 was a toy and lots of people laughed at the users. Today a modern phone is a requirement to be a member of society. It is how I pay for things. It is needed for most of my interactions with friends/family. It is the diary of my life, and the repository of my good memories with its near unlimited video/image storage at a quality only dreamed of when the iPhone 1 came out. Take away a person's iPhone1 and they weren't phased much, taking away a person's iPhone 14 is a LIFE CHANGING experience today. In 10 years taking away your AI will be on the same level, you will function but at a much more frustrating level.

[coldtea]

>Huh? The iPhone 1 was a toy and lots of people laughed at the users.

Nothing "toy" about it, it was the most advanced phone on the market. The people who laughed were just the handful of idiots that would laugh because "Apple, har har har" and then go buy the same thing from another vendor. The same kind of Zune buying crowd.

>Today a modern phone is a requirement to be a member of society.

You'd be surprised.

>It is how I pay for things. It is needed for most of my interactions with friends/family. It is the diary of my life, and the repository of my good memories with its near unlimited video/image storage at a quality only dreamed of when the iPhone 1 came out.

None of those are essential, even for a 21st century level lifestyle, some of those are indulgent, others are detrimental. In any case, nothing revolutionary, except if one thinks "I can pay by taking out my phone and pointing it at the gizmo at the cashier" is something far great than "I can pay by getting out my credit card and pointint it at the gizmo at the cashier" (or, god forbid, giving cash and not being tracked).

[alt227]

>Nothing "toy" about it, it was the most advanced phone on the market.

In no way was the original iphone the most advanced phone on the market. Many other smartphones before it and at the time were way more advanced in features and what they could do. What the first iPhone did was make it easy and accessible to everybody, not just nerds. That was the killer feature which made it take over the world.

[coldtea]

There was no usable web browsing on a phone before the iPhone. It had the most advanced browser.

There was no iPod level music players on a phone before the iPhone. There were crappy music players you can revisit and compare.

Mail apps on phones were crap.

Messaging was crap, in tiny little screens.

Just a few things.

People reviewing and getting the iPhone the time was wowed and think of it like magic. It's people not having it, and dismissing it outhand because it had a touch screen or because their unusable Windows ME phone had some crappy third party software that didn't get it. Of course all of those got either the iPhone or an Android clone of it very soon and never looked back.

[fennecfoxy]

Lmao, I had phones before the iPhone, Ericsson especially that had decent (ie usable) browsers, could play mp3 files etc. And you could install apps on them over wap, take photos/videos etc.

iPhone couldn't take videos as people have already mentioned, couldn't install any 3rd party apps to start with (because Mr. Jobs didn't believe in it), no selfie camera, no torch.

All the iPhone did was streamline people's interaction with the phone, with a large multi-touch display and a simple, intuitive (not anymore though) operating system. They definitely improved things, but in the way that Apple usually does; wait for other companies to do the things, then take the cream of the crop, iterate/improve on them, wrap them up/lock into ecosystem (which some people like) and ship.

[alt227]

This is exactly my point. Everything you have mentioned was available on smartphones before the iphone, iphone just made them more accessible and easier to use. Still stands that the iphone was in no way the most advanced smartphone on the market, it just put a prettier and easier to use interface on these features which led to reviewers being 'wowed'.

[gcanyon]

I had a Sidekick, and it had a semi-reasonable browser. But clearly, the iPhone was much better.

[chii]

> Nothing "toy" about it, it was the most advanced phone on the market. The people who laughed were just the handful of idiots that would laugh because "Apple, har har har"

"toy" doesn't have to mean cheap or low-tech.

The point is that at the time, a lot of people didn't really believe that phones could be that revolutionary - and laugh at the iphone because compared to the blackberry, it has next to no functionality.

[ghaff]

Both the iPhone and the iPod arguably took a few generations to really hit their stride. I had a fairly new Treo in 2007 and I just didn't see any compelling reason to upgrade until the 3GS. I had nothing against Apple (I owned a 4G iPod). I just didn't have a compelling reason to upgrade. Verizon also probably had a better network at the time around where I lived and traveled.

[nsxwolf]

This is wrong. I waited in line for mine. It was quite clearly a toy. It was a cool but barely usable tech demo and it was completely outclassed in features and usefulness by contemporary devices like the Motorola Q.

It showed the way forward, but it was a frustratingly limited device and everyone around at the time recognized that immediately.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> This is wrong.

Can we just accept that these are opinions? I also waited in line for the first iPhone, and it was by far better than any other phone I owned at the time. True, I was not a "CrackBerry" addict as was common for a certain class of worker in the 00s, but the ability to browse the "real" web in a way that was not completely hobbled was just night and day better than other phones at the time.

[nsxwolf]

I agree that the browser was revolutionary - but it was only really useable at home, on my wifi. The 2.5G wireless hobbled it so badly I never used it for anything more than basic info lookups. Web apps were just too painful to use and I could rarely complete an entire transaction with all the loading and back and forth. In the pre-app store era, that really mattered since the web was the only way to get anything done.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Agree with everything you've written, but that's why I said it was an opinion as to how important this was.

At that point around 2007, that vast majority of time I was in range of WiFi: at home, at work, or at a place with public wifi like a coffee shop/library. Totally agree that the 2.5 G made everything super slow, but honestly, in retrospect, that almost seems like a feature vs a bug. I would only pull out my phone on a cell connection for very targeted actions, e.g. pulling up maps, looking for phone numbers or business hours of operation, sending/reading email (as email was a batch operation the slow connection didn't have too much on an impact), etc. Point being that since it was a "costly" endeavor, I would only use it for things I was really intentional about. Versus now, when I'll pull out my phone at the slightest twinge of boredom and scroll, scroll, scroll through HN, Facebook, etc.

[pmontra]

The first iPhone was 2G when Europe had 3G since 2003. It didn't have copy and paste. It did have a touchscreen that no other phone had. It was basically and iPod touch with a phone and a 2G modem. My Nokia N70 was a better phone. I waited 4 years to buy a phone with a touchscreen. Then I thought they were mature enough I bought a Samsung S2.

[coldtea]

>It didn't have copy and paste.

Most people in 2006, just before the iPhone came out, didn't have copy and paste either. They still typed T9 style like it was 1996.

[azov]

Exactly. iPhone was a toy, 20th century internet was a toy, electricity was a toy.

On the other hand nuclear fusion, self-driving cars, and bitcoin were the things to change the world as we know it in the next decade or so.

Things that change the world tend to be hard to recognize as such when we first see them.

[californical]

I feel like my life would be less convenient without my phone, but I’d also probably be happier. So idk. There are easy alternatives, like using the website on a laptop, you just can’t pay your bills on the train without a smartphone..

I’m actually getting rid of the cell-phone plan on my iPhone, keeping it as WiFi only, and getting a dumb phone for calls. It may suck but I’m trying it as a 6 month experiment, so we’ll see!

[14]

I used an iPad the same way for a couple years with no problems. I have internet with Shaw and they have city wide hot spots so I really could get internet access basically anywhere in town. Now there are lots of voip phone providers you can easily get a number and use it to talk with people.