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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Huh? Before Apple all smartphones looked like Blackberrys? I could show you 100 popular non-keyboard-having pre-2007 devices, starting with the PalmPilot a decade before the iPhone. Besides, a lot of people still use and like the Blackberry form factor considering they're still the number one smartphone.

So no one will buy a netbook in 3 years? Apple fanbois are just ridiculous.

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Indeed. Here's the phone I had in 2006. It even had an onscreen keyboard that I often used for knocking out quick replies to emails or SMS messages. Heck, it even did copy & paste and MMS :)

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/cingular-8125.htm

Aside from a few extra buttons it looks pretty similar to today's iPhone, and very similar to Android and WP7 phones. Apple certainly did a great job of refining all the elements and introducing capacitive touch screens, but to suggest they invented the form factor is just bullshit.

They didn't invent the form factor, but they were the first to make it good enough to become successful. There's been tablets around for two decades, but the iPad is the first to achieve widespread success outside of niche markets. Even Apple had the Newton which they killed off (imagine how the world would look if Apple was the one with an old, stylus-optimized mobile device OS in 2007).

A funny comment from the writeup on that 8125:

"the display automatically switches to landscape orientation (it takes about 2 seconds to do so)"

In many cases Apple isn't about innovation so much as doing things well. Reminds me of this video:

http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/nokia-n97-promotional-vid...

  starting with the PalmPilot a decade before the iPhone

Why not to start with Apple Newton, a few years before Palm Pilot? But neither of these was a smartphone, so your point is?

Yup. And the GRiDPad pre-dates the MessagePad, but was also not a smartphone.

And, as the article's author point out, none anyone else had built previously sans keyboard achieved the mass market appeal that the iTouch, iPhone or iPad has.

Ericsson Pxxx phones were pretty popular in their time. Sure, technically they had keyboard, but after detaching it were the same form factor as iPhone.

They were stylus driven, were they not?

Yes, but you could use them without one.

The stylus was used for tiny controls, the basics like dialing were usable by finger.

I agree with you, but the Palm Pilot did sell a huge number of units. (The Pilot wasn't a phone, but neither is the 'iTouch' or iPad. The Treo was a phone that ran software a lot like a Pilot.)

When you say Palm Pilot sold a huge number of units, how huge are we talking? And in how many years? You know, just to compare things numbers are better than "huge" or "massive".

Well, I'll reply to myself.

From the 1996 (when the first PalmOS device came out) to 2003, they sold over 30.1 million PalmOS devices, of which 22 millions from the company itself (the rest from clones). [1]

In comparison Apple released the first iOS device in 2007. Two years later (at the 2009 WWDC) they announced over 40 millions iOS devices. In fact _just_ in 2009 Apple sold over 42 million such devices.

That should give a bit of a scale.

[1] http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/palmfaq.txt

[2] http://theappleblog.com/2010/01/28/ipod-touch-now-outselling...

And the Motorola RAZR sold 50 million devices in the first 18 months and over 110 million units within 4 years.

Your answer is ridiculous, Did you even read the article?

#1 Marco never said "Before Apple all smartphones looked like Blackberrys" He just said before iPhone all the smartphones were "often frustrating and with serious shortcomings and design flaws."

#2 He never said "no one will buy a netbook in 3 years" but instead asked- "How do you think the subcompact, inexpensive computer category will look in three years" He was saying that in 3years all the subcompact/inexpensive computers will look like tablets.

I hate fanbois too but what you're doing is just as "ridiculous".

I could show you 100 popular non-keyboard-having pre-2007 devices, starting with the PalmPilot a decade before the iPhone.

There's just the slight difference that the iPhone caught the attention of the general public and caused a major shift in the mobile phone industry. Not an insignificant difference, in my opinion.

So no one will buy a netbook in 3 years?

Of course they will, but hopefully there will be a number of inexpensive tablet style devices to choose from too.

Apple fanbois are just ridiculous.

As are the anti-Apple ones.

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