People end up thinking Apple invented something because they tend to make the first usable version of something that could appeal to the general population.
...are we going to pretend smartphones didn't exist before iPhone was launched? I think I was on my 3rd one when the iPhone came out and even then it was a luxury toy for the rich, I didn't know anyone who actually had an iPhone for a good few years after they came out.
> People end up thinking Apple invented something because they tend to make the first usable version
I think we can all agree that the original iPhone is the conceptual progenitor of virtually every phone that’s mattered in the market since it was released.
Smartphones prior to it have essentially zero descendants. For all intents and purposes they effectively did invent the smartphone. Hell “smartphones” as a distinct market all but don’t even exist any more. They’re barely even “phones” at this point. And this entire arc of development points directly back to the original iPhone release.
...because you said so? I'm assuming you will say Palms also don't count? Blackberries neither? Phones running Windows Mobile weren't really smartphones? Let me guess - nothing that wasn't an iPhone counts?
True, I would never argue the iPhone wasn't a transformational step-up in usability that made smartphones a mainstream device category thanks to the App Store and slab screen with multi-touch.
But at the same time.... I had been doing nearly everything the iPhone could do in terms of raw functionality (plus plenty of stuff that took 1+ years to land on iPhones) on multiple different Windows Mobile and Palm smartphones pre-iPhone.
Saying pre-iPhone smartphones don't count because "ugly nerdphone with gross keyboard" is just as ridiculous as a "iPhone was overhyped and no better than existing smartphones" claim.
Apple created a device category within smartphones that then consumed and became what we now think of as a "smartphone" after iPhone and Android together strangled the first movers.
Like, the famous Steve Jobs "an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator" line was just listing standard smartphone features by that point. More or less the definition of a smartphone in fact.
None of these were more than a blip in the market. Nothing today even remotely resembles these devices, inherits design language from them, or points back in any way to them. They are historical dead ends and nearly irrelevant.
Meanwhile the majority of people on earth own one or multiple devices that are more or less clones of the original iPhone, only faster, larger, thinner, and exponentially more capable.