Anyone think it strange that a phone company wouldn't see the emergence of the smartphone?
Guffawed when I saw those phone booth picture phones.
Guffawed when I saw those phone booth picture phones.
Palm, Nokia/Symbian, Danger, and Microsoft had been pushing smartphones before the iPhone came out. BlackBerry was pushing non-touch smartphones as well. The issue is that none of them really had a compelling user experience before Apple came along. You can say that the iPhone was obvious, but no one else saw to use capacitive touchscreens at the time. Even after the iPhone came out, everyone thought that the lack of a physical keyboard was Apple's hubris and would be their downfall. Windows Mobile, Symbian, and PalmOS didn't integrate a first-class web browsing experience. Heck, I remember Windows Mobile emphasizing scroll bars rather than the natural movement that Apple introduced with the iPhone, never mind pinch to zoom.
Apple came along and showed everyone what the point of having a smartphone in your pocket was. You'd have the best music experience. You'd have the full internet for any question you'd ever have. You'd have maps. You'd have a great photos experience. Part of that is that they recognized that the capacitive technology they'd been using in iPods and trackpads for years could be used as part of a fuller operating system. Part of it is that they really spent a lot of time figuring out how people could use a touchscreen well. Others had just tried to take desktop UI concepts and put them on a touch device.
AT&T saw the emergence of the smartphone. Heck, Microsoft, Palm, Nokia/Symbian, BlackBerry, Danger, and even Google tried to build it before Apple (Google was targeting Symbian and had to "go back to the drawing board" when the iPhone was introduced). They all missed the key affordances that would drive consumer adoption. Google's pre-iPhone prototypes were basically BlackBerry/Symbian competitors. Microsoft wanted scroll bars, a start menu, and windows. Even after the iPhone, many tried pushing devices with keyboards: Moto Droid, HTC's first Android device, the Palm Pre, etc. It's not about saying "we'll have X in the future!" People saw smartphones/tablets. Heck, Star Trek had tablets in late 80s, but they didn't need them to be usable, just props. People just never figured out how to make them compelling for users before Apple did.
Except for the fact it's sending a fax.
Smartphones don't send faxes, but they could. They don't because they exist in a world where faxing someone something is a niche application, and approximately nobody would buy a smartphone based on how well it faxes. The technological culture is different. The world has changed in more ways than just "We can stick a good computer in your pocket and power it all day long" and AT&T didn't predict that.
I realize I'm partially repeating some elements of your comment, but I do have my own point to make here: In looking at history, avoid Presentism. Try to see the past on its own terms, not through the lens of the modern day. That is a learned skill, and not having it is shown by crediting people in the past with predicting things they never thought of.
Smartphones (and PDAs) existed before the iPhone and people were trying to find that compelling combination and they were coming up with garbage like, "um, what about faxing?"
Yes, AT&T (and everyone else) didn't anticipate the iPhone, but everyone anticipated a good computer in your pocket powered all day long - they just couldn't make it a compelling experience. The iPhone is the meticulous design of applications, features, and affordances that make it a compelling user experience. Everyone kinda anticipated "internet on phones". The iPhone showed how the internet on phones could be a positive experience. Everyone anticipated music on phones. The iPhone showed how that could be the best music UI.
I don't think there's anything that the iPhone did that hadn't been done before, but poorly. The point is that a lot of it is bringing many different things together in a cohesive, compelling product. You could have bought a Windows Mobile device before the iPhone came out, but it was just crummy. Saying that it's because AT&T shows it faxing is a bit of a cop out. Microsoft had PocketPC devices for around 7 years before the iPhone. The name is literally a computer in your pocket. Everyone has been anticipating a computer in your pocket for a long time. Apple made it compelling.
It's possible that you don't remember all the talk about pocket computing, all the ads, all the failed products. They were there. Everyone was not only anticipating them, but trying to make them. They just didn't know what they were for, what the UI needed to be like, what affordances users wanted, etc.
The wireless (cellphone) capability would add a new dimension: on-the-go connectivity. In theory.
One of our sales guys was going to NYC and asked for us to load 'the latest build' and against our best judgement, we did. He reported back next day to us that he had successfully send a FAX to a potential client from the back seat of his cab. We all thought "What the heck! We never said that would work!" and then, "Oh, wow, looks like that worked!"
But by 2001 or so I had a Palm Phone. It was essentially a smart phone but it lacked color, weighed five pounds, you needed a stylus and there was no app store. My non-tech friends who didn't see the value of the web when I showed it to them in 1994 just laughed at me. They told me with complete wonderment, why would anyone ever want the internet in their pocket?
But the same mainframe execs who never saw either the mini or microcomputer coming also never thought that trend would continue.
> Guffawed when I saw those phone booth picture phones.
It's how these things usually work: The Future Is The Same, But Different
The Same: Things basically click along they way they do now. Want to make a call away from home or office? Use a payphone. Most natural thing in the world.
But Different: Well, payphones aren't going to stay the same, are they? Videophones have been a Coming Thing for decades now, so obviously we'll have Video Payphones.
All of those Coming Things. Where have they all gone?
The interesting thing to me is this: Car phones had existed for decades by that point. They'd slimmed down to bag phones for the masses, and bricks for Gordon Gekko and his proteges. But AT&T didn't prognosticate their continued slimming driving payphones into irrelevance. You don't even need the smartphone concept, which was a truly interesting convergence of cell phone and computer, to get the idea that "Cell phones getting smaller" leads to "I can carry a phone with me" leads to "I don't need a payphone" leads to payphones no longer existing.
Oh, and Bag Phone, because nobody else seems to remember them:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5T1UGfm_OMM
Even accurately predicts portrait-mode video.
See also the "minisec" from Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth (1976):
Duncan Makenzie had a new minisec, and he was not quite sure how parts of it worked.
The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it.
Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267
Others:
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93979/did-science-...
I could see him using these commercials in his pitch to AT&T. "You said we would. It's time."
Between the time they signed it and the release of the iPhone at retail, they were acquired by att cellular.
So they chose to present things in a way that the average person in 1993 could relate to. Everyone would have been familiar with calling home from a pay phone when traveling -- so it would make sense to present a future where video calling is done from a pay phone. That doesn't necessarily mean AT&T thought this is exactly how the future would play out.