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Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

Not a serious article. Google is investing billions yearly in r&d for far reaching, very risky innovations.

As for Microsoft and Apple ,we really don't know.

Could we have predicted the iPhone in 2005 ? Do we know what kind of car Apple is working on ? Do we know about Microsoft "special projects" group which recruited someone from Darpa ?

And than finally when we do know about innovative efforts , the author dismisses them out of hand: "Google’s Project Ara modular phone and Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headset, by contrast, are the tech equivalent of concept cars: supremely ambitious today, but years away from hitting the market in what will likely be a tamer, less revolutionary form."

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Nokia produced the first Communicator model in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator

Compaq was making PocketPC based PDAs that could, via an external "jacket" make use of a PCCard mobile modem for connectivity somewhere around 2000-2001.

HTC was making phones running Windows Mobile as early as 2002-2003.

> Could we have predicted the iPhone in 2005?

Actually yes.

LG phones beat iPhone with the LG Prada (and I think the Voyager too?). If not, at least the voyager was still a more usable phone than the "you're holding it wrong" days of the iPhone. The Neonode N1m had the slide to unlock before Apple used it as well. It beat both LG and Apple.

And people tend to forget Palm Pilots when worshiping the genius that is iPhone. These were released as far back as at the mid 90's and were extremely popular among the now older generation. When Jobs trashed the stylus I believe he was referring to these. My father had several models.

The point I'm getting at harkens back to an alleged Isaac Newton quote, which _ironically_ Google actually used back in the old days of Google ;) "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Speaking of Newton, Apple released

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_%28platform%29

in August of 1993. The Palm Pilot came out in March of 1997. Of course, there were PDAs long before the Newton, too, but Apple's role in mobile goes back farther than you give them credit for. They were part of the "slog," not just the "breakthrough."

> at least the voyager was still a more usable phone than the "you're holding it wrong" days of the iPhone.

Again, you have your timeline wrong. The antenna issues didn't pop up until the 4rd generation iPhone.

> And people tend to forget Palm Pilots when worshiping the genius that is iPhone.

No, we remember Palm Pilots and the like which is why we worship the genius that is the iPhone design. There's a reason why all contemporary phones follow it. If you think "hype" is the only reason why people switched then you're selectively forgetting the issues with the older designs.

While Apple designed the phone well, the key breakthrough was touch based interfaces and Apple got the technology(capacitive touch sensing) for that by acquiring fingerWorks.

Even though Jobs knew that touch based sensing is key , Apple wasn't the one coming up with the solution. Or maybe the did work on that , behind the scenes , but failed ?

I sometimes wonder if the choice of screen tech came down to prevalent weather of the office location.

California is nice a warm most of the year, allowing gloves free handling of devices. In contrast, places like Finland is covered in snow for somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the year. A stylus and resistive screen works much better under those conditions.

And South Korea (Samsung) is not that different. I seem to recall images and videos of Koreans using snack sausages as an ad-hoc stylus when capacitive screen devices started shipping.

Also, i think a resistive screen and stylus allows more data to be packed into a small screen.

And Apple has had a history of gobbling startups. iTunes was a purchase as well, iirc.

Why didn't Google, Microsoft, or IBM buy fingerworks? Why did only Apple see that this tech was key, and was humble enough to know they didn't have it, and could buy it?

So Apple had great vision, but lets a startup take the risk. Isn't this what the article is talking about ?

> Could we have predicted the iPhone in 2005 ?

depends on what you mean by predict. It was pretty obvious that phone/data would be added to PDAs soon. It might not have been obvious that Apple would do it so well and take PDAs from a geek/niche thing to the mainstream.

> It was pretty obvious that phone/data would be > added to PDAs soon.

Indeed. I had a Handspring Visor with the cellular add-on in 2000. And then there were the Palm Treos, awesome PDAs plus phones with a thriving app ecosystem. What Apple did was add a touch rather than a stylus interface. And the rest is history.

Yes ,i meant the iPhone as something Apple built.

At that time the iPod was hugely successful. Phones got more and more features very quickly: web/wap browsers, e-mail, cameras, installable games. The Motorola ROKR was the first try at combining an iPod with a phone. It failed. Back then everybody was expecting an iPodPhone in the near future.

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