[tverbeure]

Did it have multi-touch?

Propaganda or not, I still remember the sense of wonder when first experiencing the smooth zooming and panning with two fingers on the first iPhone. Adding multi-touch to the 2007 MacBook trackpad was one of the reasons why I switched to OSX too.

(I still have that phone and when I try it today, smooth is not what I’d call it.)

[regularfry]

The fanfare over multi-touch in phones is something I've never understood. It's flashy but phone use (certainly my phone use) is optimised for one thumb, not two fingers.

[justsomehnguy]

If somehow you could have the same phone but with a resistive, single-touch screen and use it just like you use it now, then you would learn what:

a resistive screens do actually need to be pressed instead of just touched, if you never get a literal sore thumb from a touch screen usage - well you don't miss anything but it's quite painful after a while and adds to a carpal tunnel syndrome

a multi-touch sensor greatly helps when you need to discern and filter out the false positives

[tverbeure]

There's a difference between "optimized for" and "it's the only thing you need".

I could in theory get by with + and - buttons to zoom in and out of a map, but it's way more convenient to use pinch to zoom. But even for the browser, I use pinch to zoom all the time.

[hyperhello]

You can do things with your hands (fingers) This gives many people an enormously satisfying feeling.