[thoughtsimple]

How do you reconcile your view that this is a myth with this:

"But for the Google Android team, the iPhone was a kick in the stomach.

'What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,' DeSalvo said. 'It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.'"

Either the Android team already had something like the iPhone but it was so far out that it may as well not have existed or even their work on the touchscreen version was not nearly good enough to ship after the iPhone. I don't think you can read that passage and think that Google was ready with an iPhone like touchscreen design. Even their early touchscreen designs that I saw were still smallish screens with physical keyboards attached.

[ori_b]

I was interning at RIM (now BlackBerry) during the era around the release of the iPhone. RIM also had prototyped iPhone form factors at the time. They were backwards, poorly implemented, and generally turds. You may remember the BlackBerry Storm. You may wish you didn't remember it.

Android was clearly in a similar situation. (In fact, they were clearly playing catchup until at least Android 4.0). However, there was something working. The concept was there. A prototype implementation was there. The execution was not.