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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

This is rewriting history. It was good, but not perfect.

Cameras were pretty common on phones, even with video, and the iPhone couldn’t shoot video for years.

There was no customized Home Screen which had a lot of hand-wringing.

Again, as everyone mentions no apps and that’s huge. Let’s not forget that the backup to apps, websites, weren’t made for mobile yet. Not even apples own website.

When the iPhone first came out it was halfway to a luxury feature phone in terms of ability. Until mobile web and apps became readily available, it wasn’t particularly “smart”.

It was subpar in ways people expected more from (basic phone stuff), and great in new ways (Touch! Web!). That sounds exactly like the reviews for this headset.

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I don't know about that, yes you're right with regards to what the phone didn't have. But I still remember it being an evolutionary change when I watched the release. I don't feel that for the Apple Vision Pro.

Think about what the iPhone had at the time compared to what we were used to, provided my first was the iPhone 3GS.

It was one of the first phones that actually had an incredible touch screen compared to the best phones of the time, it was one of the first phones you could scroll and navigate smoothly without hitching, something Samsung struggled with for years. The ability for the device to seamlessly rotate between portrait and horizontal views. The ability to toss away my MP3 player and play music in the same way from my phone in a user friendly interface. The ability to do all of these things on the one device and have an interface that allows me to switch between active applications that could run in the background. The iPhone introduced the idea of gestures that actually worked, even just the idea of pinch and zoom functionality was an absolute game changer for mobile phones and Apple nailed it. It took companies years after the release of the iPhone to implement a decent touch screen that allowed smooth pinch and zoom functionality.

These were at the time some of the things that made the phone smart that we didn't have before. I think sometimes people forget some of the subtle things the iPhone brought with it that were a complete game changer

The 3GS was light years better than the original iPhone, and by that time it had things like actual GPS, the App Store, and usable mobile data. The original iPhone was seriously limited.

Ironically many of the things you are identifying about the iPhone are also true of the Vision Pro - for example the eye and hand tracking that enable gestures that actually work in an incredibly intuitive way is a game changer - including literally pinch to zoom.

I think there are other things you are seriously underestimating about Vision Pro - for example the quality of movies, including 3D, is better than anything I've ever seen in any home, movie theater, or other headset. It's simply stunning.

I also don't think a lot of people have tried thing like using FaceTime with the first person camera. I have, and it's an incredible way to give a presentation or explain things to people even if they are using a phone at the other end. Incredibly natural.

There really are as many steps forward, if not more so with the Vision Pro than with the iPhone.

Quite the opposite

It was so smart that you could browse the desktop web properly, and zooming worked great for it.

You’re making things that in the context of the launch were irrelevant.

The iPhone was lock ass from day 1

Yeah but you couldn't be on a call and browse the web at the same time

No copy/paste

Terrible camera

No apps

Kickass isn't perfect.

Never said perfect but was ahead of others in many ways. If I plan to rewrite history I would start with the VHS & Beta war. Cheers.

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