Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This

> The [2007 iPhone launch] presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade later. For example, he doesn’t focus much on apps.

Well, this is because there were no apps. It's was a brand new platform!

> Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives.

Jobs didn't die after presenting the iPhone in 2007 though. He passed away in 2011, well into the "there's an app for that" ad campaign that boasted how the iPhone could in fact radically change the rhythm of users' daily lives.

I'm not sure there's a strong connection with Jobs' desire to limit native code execution and social good will. It's probably worth pointing out that reportedly, Jobs himself kept iOS devices away from his own children because he considered them "too addictive."

Apple's original position on third party apps was that they deserved on the web, in what would eventually become known as "progressive web app" form. That position was abandoned not just because it was a mediocre user experience, but also, it actually prevented device lock-in, which is something Jobs obviously craved.

You can argue that some apps are time-sucks, or bad for your overall well-being, and I'll be right there with you. But that has relatively little to do with whether they're shitty web apps or native code apps.

And also, the fact that smartphones do way more than originally imagined is a great thing. In most parts of the world, I can pull out my phone, tap a few characters, and a car will magically pull up where I am and take me wherever I need to go. Or bring me food. I can translate anything to anything. I know the second a flight is delayed, which lets me be more present in life. My life is assuredly better because my smartphone is turing-complete and runs third party software.

I think the author is wrong on nearly all counts. I think Steve Jobs loved to see what people were interested in and find a way to make it easier to have and use. The iPod was a way of taking something people loved to do (listen to music) and make it easier with "1000 songs in your pocket."

At the risk of romanticizing: from what I've read, he wasn't about creating brand-new concepts, he was all about taking existing concepts and turning them into what people really wanted them to be.

Lastly, I think the author gives Apple and Steve Jobs far too much credit. Apps didn't become successful on these platforms because of app vendors, they became successful because people started asking "what else can I do with this phone?" People _want_ to constantly feel "in the loop" and "productive."

I'm not sure Steve Jobs's opinion here is relevant.

I'm also not convinced that just because Steve Jobs pitched something one way in a presentation so that the audience would understand what the device meant, meant that he didn't see a large vision of an always-on, internet-enabled device.

I get lambasted for this opinion all the time, but I am still holding it...

The Blackberry was the peak of efficient, minimal phone usage:

* It optimized for doing things like short letter and message writing well through the keyboard.

* Blackberry messenger still leads in terms of features that can reduce noise: appear offline and availability settings, friends lists.

* It focused on productivity applications, screen size kept browsing to "as needed".

As a Canadian, I remember when the iPhone started to take over. My friends were sitting around playing Paper Toss, meanwhile my berry sat quietly in my pocket.

> In the remarks, after discussing the phone’s interface and hardware, he spends an extended amount of time demonstrating how the integrated iPod leverages the touch screen before detailing the many ways Apple engineers improved the age-old process of making phone calls. “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever made,” Mr. Jobs exclaims at one point. “The killer app is making calls,” he later adds. Both lines spark thunderous applause. He doesn’t dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address.

> The presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade later.

Having actually seen the video years ago, this article strikes me as a big mischaracterization of what Jobs said -- let alone envisioned, which only Jobs would know.

I don't remember the exact quote, but in the first couple minutes of the video, Jobs introduces the talk saying iPhone is going to revolutionize three industries by combining an iPod, a phone, and internet communication device.

Jobs was fully aware it was going to be huge for those three reasons combined. Had he not envisioned it was about having the internet in your pocket, he'd have stopped at it being an iPod that can place phone calls.

I think "Wanted" should be changed to "Imagined" to better reflect the content.

With that being said, it's a refreshing article. Most articles on Steve Jobs focus on how visionary he was, how he was predicting everything etc. This one is stating that, he was a human after all, just like us, and that the future is notoriously hard to imagine and predict. Nassim Taleb would agree :)

He didn't want us to use Macs the way we do either. The Mac's spiritual predecessor, the Lisa, originally came with an office suite and that was it. No third-party application software could be installed. Eventually, alternative OSes (including Unix) and an emulation layer allowing Apple to badge-engineer unsold Lisas as the "Macintosh XL" would change that, but the original concept was fixed functionality that would prevent users from being overwhelmed by too many choices.

Steve had a fondness for completely circumscribed ecosystems and "computers as appliances" which I don't think he ever totally let go of, despite innovation and market demands showing obvious benefits to users being able to expand the capabilities of their own devices.

It’s interesting to ponder how much of the smartphone ecosystem was an accidental byproduct of implementation details: namely, the decision to use a stripped-down desktop OS, rather than a beefed-up iPod OS. Allegedly, the latter was also in the works as a phone, but it was Scott Forstall’s OS X team who won the battle internally. Even though the feature set was shipped as “iPod that makes calls”, the fact that everyone knew there was a full OS under the hood made the proliferation of apps inevitable.

I suspect we would have gotten to the present-day norm eventually either way; but, if not for “OS X in your pocket”, the iPhone might have wound up in the same historic dustbin as the Newton, the Palm, and the Sidekick, a mere precursor rather than the thin end of a revolutionary wedge.

> He doesn’t dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address.

That's because, IIRC, he was doing a dramatic reveal where each set of features was discussed separately (iPod, cell phone, internet navigator). The fact that this section came last doesn't mean Jobs thought it was less important. In fact, it was arguably the most impressive part (iPods already existed, as did cell phones, but there were no good touch-screen internet-enabled devices). That's probably why it was last.

This essay absurdly treats humans and their beliefs as immutable objects. There is no justifiable reason to think this, even as much as Jobs may have likened himself to a deity.

Perhaps Jobs didn't appreciate the full extent to which their product would transform humanity, but that is not necessarily the same thing as him not wanting, or opposing, us using our iPhones as much as we do.

I understand the desire for a backlash on smartphones, but their ubiquity is simply a demonstration of just how much utility we derive from them.

While the title of this article may be a bit misleading as numerous people here have reliably pointed out, I think comments so far are missing the broader point. Cal Newport's focus for awhile now has been on "minimalist" use of our phones, and how social media, etc. are interrupting/damaging our lives in numerous ways.

Despite the "cheap" headline and arguments you could make of his narrow interpretation of Jobs' introduction of the iPhone, Newport's broader points IMHO should still be recognized and are important to be heard.

Evidently he didn’t let iPads into the home as far as the kids involved:

https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-steve-jobs-never-l...

For some, these gadgets are crack cocaine.

Seeing that by the time the iPhone was introduced, there were already millions of people tuning out the world with iPods, I doubt that SJ didn’t see this coming. By the time he passed, the App Store and social media on mobile were already a big thing.

The reason Jobs didn’t want to demo the Internet part of the phone was because it was terribly buggy at the time of the demo and they rehearsed a way to carefully navigate a few pages in a specific order that wouldn’t crash the browser.

Jobs didn't focus on, at the time, non-existent features, like the mobile web, because they didn't exist. The authors interpretation is not well supported

I call bs. It was a very clever entry to the market with lots of opportunity for product improvement. 3G chip? Reason to upgrade. App Store? Another.

He thought he could heal his cancer with crystals, let's not hold him up as some perfect deity.

"He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives."

He didn´t do it. We did.

The author knows he didn't die until years after the first iPhone launch?

He underestimated smartphones, so what?

We all did..

Please stop telling us what Steve wanted or not wanted? He is dead for Christ’s sake. Let him rest

So easy to put words in the mouth of someone dead.

LOL at the NYT taking Steve Jobs' marketing tactics as his actual normative views. News flash: Steve Jobs was the best in the history of capitalism at "it's not a bug, it's a feature." The iPhone was perfect without 3rd party apps because it didn't have 3rd party apps! Once there were 3rd party apps, it was perfect with 3rd party apps. It was perfect with a 3 inch screen because it had a 3 inch screen. When he increased it then it was perfect then. When it had a bad radio it wasn't the phone that was imperfect, it was you and your stupid fucking hand!

Notice how many times Apple has used the motto "the best iStuff since iStuff." It worked better several years ago, but they always claim their current thing is the Platonic ideal of its category.