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Comment by glhaynes | Hacker News Reader

It's just hard for most people [including me] to look at any smartphone today (essentially all of which are clearly directly descended from the iPhone) and agree with the idea that "Apple is not innovative". I'm not sure what one would have to be looking at to not see the products they ship as innovative.

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I'm curious now. What part of the iPhone is innovative? To me it seems like a Palm Pilot with a phone app. Well, and a few hardware updates, but it was released ten years later, so you expect the hardware to be better.

What parts does one have to look at to see the innovation? I feel like I'm missing something obvious...

The multitouch screen interface. A mobile browser that works. Visual voicemail. Text messages threaded in a conversation view like a chat client.

And that was just version 1.0 in 2007, which is still better than most Nokia phones today. Then they launched the App Store and the iPad.

I'm sure someone had a touch screen phone, somewhere, before the iPhone. But no one nailed all those little features of user experience. I'm sure the software/hardware for a consistent multitouch screen capable of being manufactured at scale was alone a very big deal.

That answers my question, thanks.

The obvious thing is the amazing software coupled with a touchscreen that actually worked. And I don't mean sorta worked, as long as you used a stylus and whacked it hard enough like the Palm Pilot, I mean you glide your hand on the screen and it reacts like a physical piece of paper being dragged around. Nothing like this existed before the iPhone and all smartphones today are clear descendants.

using that logic: wasn't a palm pilot just a smaller newton?

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