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Comment by aeleos | Hacker News Reader

It wasn't always an evolution. Despite all the apple "oh we changed everything look at us" they really did. And for the first few years after that everything was changing so fast it was a revolution. But it has since slowly died out and I guess new technologies with faster innovation will become the new iphone revolution

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True, but capacitive multi-touch hasn't been the only innovation in the iPhone over the years. We forget just how limited the original iPhone was (no 3G, slow CPU -- it took ages to render a webpage, even though it was a huge step up over its contemporaries, it was still barely fit for purpose, no App Store either).

I think the slides in the keynote were actually on-point for this, there've been multiple innovations (multi-touch, high-DPI screens, Touch ID, their shift to in-house processors, computational photography), and it's really the aggregate that's lead to a great device. But break it down and it is an iterative, evolutionary process. That's why so many people often seem disappointed after every keynote!

That said, maybe the original iPhone really was a bit special :-)

I'm not sure if it neccesarily that the first iPhone was special in an of itself, but that the shift to mobile was special, and was largely enabled by the iPhone. Subsequent models aren't tied to a once-in-a-generation shift in technology, and so they feel more like iterative improvements.

The iPhone from 5 years ago will look as limited to you as the 2007 phones did compared to the iPhone.

It's just that the iPhone appeared all at once, whereas you have 5 keynotes to go from 2012's iPhone (the iPhone 4S) to the iPhone 7.

Since then we've got: 4G (LTE), Touch ID, dual-LED flash, NFC and Apple Pay, motion co-processor, 802.11ac, Lightning, Bluetooth 5.0, phase detection autofocus, 4K video and slo-mo 1080p, 3D Touch, haptic feedback, water resistance, wide color gamut, brightness increases, and several times faster CPUs and GPUs (allowing for far more demanding apps).

You are looking from a "groundbreaking" and "refreshing" point of view. Everything is an evolution. Is going from hand textile to mechanical textile a revolution (happened in a period known as "Industrial Revolution")? I still think that's an evolution. The reason Industrial Revolution is coined revolution is the "break the norm" mentality. But the inventions and the transition from hand textile to mechanical textile industry was an evolution itself. We don't call human evolution "human revolution" because we broke the norm of other mammals' biological evolutions.

You are just taking the literal meaning of the words not what they are actually being used for. In this case, evolution means the type of small incremental updates that we have been slowly getting disappointed by for the past few years. Yea literally evolution includes revolution but saying that doesn't add anything to the discussion.

From Google search:

    "a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people's ideas about it."

I didn't deny the actual definition of revolution and I recognized it. I am merely expressing my view on the following comments, which are what being discussed here.

First comment:

    Do you think phones are a "done" thing? I mean what we are seeing these days is more of an evolution than revolution.
    It's always been an evolution.

Your comment:

    It wasn't always an evolution.
    And for the first few years after that everything was changing so fast it was a revolution.

Breaking norm is a revolution, but the steps are evolution. Everything is evolution.

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