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Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

In the early days of personal computing, things like AppleScript, HyperCard, and Basic, were used by the typical computer user. Computer users were rather self-selected, had invested a lot of money to own a computer, and generally bought into the promise of computing as a “bicycle for the mind.” The iPhone opened the floodgates, bringing TONS of people to computing for the first time, and it resulted in a shift from computing as a creation medium, to one of consumption. It’s interesting to see it start to come full circle. It’s taken about a decade, but something that used to be mainstream in computing (programming your machine to do something interesting interesting / useful) is on the cusp of becoming mainstream once more.

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The iPhone definitely did not definitely did not bring tons of people to computing for the first time. By the time the iPhone came out PCs and laptops were pretty much in every home anyway. Let me put it this way, I live in a third world country(Lebanon), and the first time we had a computer at home was in 1996(11 years before the iPhone), and by that point most of my friends in school already had a PC at home. We were not wealthy by any measure(more like lower to middle class at the time).

The iPhone did many things, but that is not one of them. No, what brought computing to the masses was Windows and cheap computers(around the time of the 486~pentium era). While I agree that nowadays it's common for a child's first interaction with computers to be a smartphone, this was definitely not the case when the iPhone was first introduced in 2007 and access to computers was already quite common and cheap everywhere around the world

Access != adoption.

Even if every house had a PC, it doesn’t mean everyone in that house used it.

Today it’s not uncommon for every person in the house to have their own smartphone. And they use them on levels rivaling television at its peak — hours and hours a day. And it includes the grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles who wouldn’t even touch the PC.

The iPhone and the smartphone era it ushered in a seismic shift in society, is that not obvious? Something like 2 billion smartphone users globally today, roughly a decade from the iPhone introduction. In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions.

Kids used their PCs to write homework assignments. Parents used it to print out directions from map quest.

The iPhone likely dramatically increased the frequency of use but PC penetration was near universal by the late 2000s.

FWIW my grandpa and most others at the retirement home use a dumb phone.

> In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions.

In the late 1990s, internet users (which, as the smartphone revolution hadn't happened, were largely a subset of PC users) were in the hundreds of millions and doubling roughly annually, though that slowed dramatically around 2000, but still was rapid enough to reach over a billion before the iPhone was introduced.

The smartphone revolution did a lot, but even so your are way overstating it.

I just don't think you can equate internet access with the relationship people have today with technology. Addressing several comments here, but frequency matters – it's a lot different to have a computer in every home that family members use to varying degrees, vs a smartphone in the hands of billions of people who are glued to them on a daily basis at levels that rival Television at its peak.

The iPhone is responsible for many things but "bringing tons of people to computing for the first time" is probably not one of them.

The vast majority of iPhone users have a computer, it was even more prevalent in 2007 when the first iPhone came out, and was a luxury gadget that was mostly purchased by technology minded and wealthy people - a group who were vastly more likely to own home computers.

I see plenty of young people with iPhones who aren’t wealthy and because I work in education, I can tell you many of them don’t have computers at home. If there’s a computer at home, it may not have broadband. The iPhone is their computer.

If a kid needs a traditional computer after school lets out and they live in an urban area, they go to a library or to a community center.

I was surprised to see Mac Pros at the main branch of the Boston Public Library this summer for young people to use for media production, for example.

"Young poor people" buying 1000$ phones is a strictly American phenomenon.

I'm from Spain and I can 100% confirm it is not only in America.

You’re right about that. Because as long as you have income and your credit isn’t terrible and you pay your monthly bill, you can get an expensive cell phone.

In 2015 roughly 85% of households had a laptop or PC[1]. iPhone's marketshare in the U.S. is roughly 40%[2]. Even if you assume that all those without a computer at home have an iPhone at home, that still means that 62.5% of iPhone users have a computer at home, and that's just unthinkable.

It should be obvious that the vast majority have iPhone users have computers at home and it's most likely was even more pronounced in 2007.

Also, broadband is irrelevant to the discussion.

[1]-https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... [2]-https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/iphone-ownership-all-ti...

You’re comparing household statistics to individuals.

Plus, totally anecdotal, but even if every house in the 90s had a PC (and it was really more like 40% around 1997), they weren’t used anywhere remotely like the TV in the household was. Like, a couple of teenagers maybe spent all day on it, and everyone had the tech savvy aunt or uncle, but it just was nothing like today where it’s typical to see grandma and grandpa FaceTiming.

I am, but that hardly makes a difference. Assuming households residents amount are spread randomly between household with computers and households without then the ratio holds for individuals(the assumption is probably slightly off, since there is likely a correlation between poverty and having a computer and poverty and number of children, but I doubt it's very big and besides the same correlation most likely holds between poverty and having iPhones)

And the iPhone was released in 2007, not 1997.

Remember, that old Windows XP desktop in the guest bedroom that nobody really uses anymore counts as having a PC at home, even if for all intents and purposes, it’s not used for anything except for the occasional game of Solitaire.

Outside of certain demographics you just don’t see people staring into their computers in line at the bakery, on the subway platform, at dinner, at the grocery store. Television remained a dominant media deep into the penetration of the personal computer with people spending hours and hours watching every day. Again, outside certain demographics, this just wasn’t the experience of most people with respect to computers. For me and my friends, yes - we spend all day on our computers. Most didn’t. Today, people are glued to their smartphones.

I’m not saying that literally everyone owns an iPhone, either. What I am saying is that smartphone adoption hit an inflection point with the iPhone - heading upwards into the stratosphere. When you look at the concepts people had for what an Apple phone might look like pre-iphone, no one was prepared for what was coming.

what is the hypercard of the iphone

Html5

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