[Analemma_]

To be honest, I think you're badly misremembering that era. People were calling the iPhone "the Jesus Phone" after the original keynote announcement, the lines on launch day were around the block, and upon release, there were definitely tons of flame wars around physical vs. touchscreen keyboards but there was a widespread consensus that the iPhone's predictive typing correction was pretty good and that the touchscreen was miles ahead of any similar-equipped phone (many of which were still resistive, ugh!).

It definitely didn't get mainstream popularity until the 3GS/4 and the App Store, but people were definitely interested from day 1. Don't forget that early builds of Android looked much more like a Blackberry clone until the iPhone was announced, and then Google immediately scrapped everything and rewrote it from the ground up to be iPhone-like.

[xenadu02]

It just proves that no matter what you make and how innovative a product it is someone will come along a decade later and claim it was nothing but marketing fluff.

[dagmx]

Gruber said it best (to paraphrase): Apple does things that are derided at launch, and then eventually becomes so commonplace that people think it was obvious.

The iPhone is that. I used to deride it at launch when I had my Sony P1, but it was truly a revolution. Anyone denying its success looking back,even as a v1, is living in a bubble.

[bschmidt1]

Didn't claim that at all, and have used iPhone for years.

[xenadu02]

> I remember the touch screen being a tough learning curve for the majority of people. people did not like those touch screens for the first several years of smartphones. They came out at the height of texting and ringtone era, and we were pretty set in our ways, and it took years to change that behavior.

Touch is probably the single most intuitive and easy to use interface ever created for computing. It is so obvious even a 5 year old child understands it without being taught (as both my kids did). Very very very few people found touch to be a significant learning curve at all so I'm not sure where that idea comes from.

There was definitely a whisper campaign from the tech talking heads that people wanted keyboards and touch screens were not the future... but that was mostly from people who never used it or competitors who had nothing to compete with.

> The first iPhone was also gigantic, hideous, couldn't send pictures - something even a cheap $20 Samsung from the carrier could do

It wasn't much larger than competing "smart" phones at the same and the large size was in fact a huge selling point: a bigger screen to see more content in apps and on websites.

MMS support was missing for sure but was also rolled out as a software update to all existing customers for free. The first time AFAIK that ever happened in the cell phone game. Prior to that (and still in Android land) updates require carrier cooperation and manufacturers did not hand out free features - buy a new phone for that.

> and it also didn't sell very well. People were more into "The Google phone", the Sidekiq, or the latest Razr.

I would say it sold quite well and exceeded expectations. In the iPhone announcement Apple said they'd like to sell 10 million of them by 2008 and sold 13 million. Sales roughly doubled the next year (2009). And the next (2010). And the next (2011). And the next (2012).

> I think the App Store resonated a lot more with people back then rather than the iPhone as a device.

I don't agree it resonated more than the device at that time but it was certainly an extremely important milestone. Apps, especially games, definitely drove a lot of adoption.

[bschmidt1]

> It definitely didn't get mainstream popularity until the 3GS/4 and the App Store

Yeah that's all I was saying. I've used iPhone exclusively for 15 years and am not anti-Apple, but people cannot handle nuance in online forums, so they they come out swinging if you share any experience that doesn't 1:1 reflect the brand marketing of the company.