[elif]

Because the business powers throughout tech companies at the time would not have allowed an iPhone to exist.

I know because I worked directly with all ~33 pocketPC devices that existed at the time for my work.

The iPhone success doesn't happen without the boldness to radically defy industry norms.

And I say this as a Linux maximalist whose daily driver phone has been uninterrupted from G1 to modern day nexus, galaxy, and pixel only. The iPhone changed the meta, when no one else could.

There were buttonless attempts by pocketPC makers, but without the holistic software vision Steve had they didn't work.

[nabla9]

Exactly. Nokia had a functional touchscreen phone 7 years before the iPhone in their R&D lab. Nokia and many others had tablets over 10 years beforehand.

It was Steve jobs that pushed it trough into a product.