[pekk]

> The entire desktop metaphor, include the Trash, the files in folders, etc. is about simplifying the user experience with the computer.

The work of the first iPhone team including Jony Ive might fit into Apple's philosophy, but those individuals deserve so much credit for Apple's small-device turnaround because iPhone wasn't inevitable and neither was Apple's recent success. Apple actually struggled for years in the personal computer market, made lots of now-forgotten stinker products with huge flaws, and mostly just continued to sell computers to a fanatical but tiny following. For example: yes, certainly I'll drag my floppy disk to the trash when I'm done working with it because there is no eject button, that sounds safe enough not to think about. What? To Apple's hardcore fans, that was always intuitive, and it does remove an ugly button from the front, but it is not "usable." It's just characteristic Apple. Apple never had a monopoly on usability.

[digi_owl]

iPhone was inevitable because it was basically a iPod with a mobile radio.

Its main selling point of the day (besides visual voice mail) was that it could hook into the existing ITMS infrastructure without the limitations that their previous cooperation with Motorola was saddled with.

Back when it launched, all but the highest capacity iPods were competing with cheaper and cheaper featurephones packing more and more storage.

The press was basically screaming for Apple to get a phone out the door or go down in flames.

I think the biggest turnaround for Apple was when they got Jobs off the "tech hub" idea he was riding. The idea that the Mac would the center of "your" (his) technological life.

This turned the company from a computer company into a consumer electronics company.