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Comment by mindstab | Hacker News Reader

Yes. It's the iPhone disruption... That over half the market there that's android? Doesn't count cus they entered later (well they were working on it before but launched later) and therefore nothing they contributed counts. Yes clearly

"All of this, because of the iPhone."

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Look at Android before and after the iPhone was announced:

http://www.tekgadg.com/storage/Android_before_after_iphone_t...

Gruber & his audience know (believe? Is there doubt?) that.

I played with the Android SDK back in 2007. It was totally a BB clone before the iPhone came along. Granted, Android was designed to support multiple resolutions and form factors, but the default was a BB-like device until 2008.

Are you claiming that Apple was not inspired by any previous device for the IPhone?

There were a bunch of full-screen touch devices way before the IPhone.

What about the Mac UI? If not for Xerox, it would have been completely different.

You miss the entire point about why the iPhone was revolutionary. Yes, there were other touchscreen devices (mostly capacitive and plastic). There were fundamental rethinking of the hardware internally which hadn't been done before. However, it was about the software. The software on the iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of anything that existed. It made the experience fun, beautiful and intuitive which was not how smartphones were previously.

technoslut: I did not say that the IPhone is not revolutionary but it doesn't mean it didn't take inspiration from earlier products.

June 2007: iPhone launches

July 2008: iPhone 3G

October 2008: HTC Dream, aka T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone, launches: has both touchscreen and keyboard

June 2009: iPhone 3GS launches

October 2009: Motorola Droid and the big Verizon advertising campaign starts making a dent into the iPhone market share.

Well, Android certainly hopped on, but most of the basic innovations and vision came from the iPhone and Android took them and did their own thing with them. They copied. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, HP, etc. all have taken turns copying their peers at something. Good for them, it is the right decision. Otherwise, Android would have turned out a lot more like the Microsoft Kin.

I'd say Palm were really the first to provide a usable pocket computer. iPhone did not come out of nowhere.

Being first is about as useful as saying "first!" and there is zero value in "coming out of nowhere". What matters is creating something great.

The iPhone turned the industry on its head. Palm did not.

Most useless discussion ever. But still, how do you define "turned the industry on it's head"? By the amount of money that is made in a market segment? I developed mobile apps long before the iPhone existed. I still get requests for web development.

The iPhone very clearly disrupted the market for mobile phones. Whether or not someone else had the same idea at the same time (but couldn’t bring a disruptive product to the market) doesn’t really matter. Current market shares don’t really matter.

This Android defensiveness is getting on my nerves. Worse than rabid Apple fanboys in the 90s.

imo, the android defensiveness stems from the rabid Apple fanboys of the past ~5 years (eg daring fireball).

My advice is to not be so sensitive. Android is very successful. There is no need to jump in loudly screaming whenever someone mentions Apple or the iPhone.

Exactly, we aren't rooting for football teams here, no need to act territorial.

In addition, its a factual reality that Android came out after the iPhone. That doesn't discount its contributions however, just puts into perspective its place in history.

Your advice works for the Apple fanboys too. IPhone is very successful as much, if not, more than Android.

It's interesting though that it was Apple dissing Google in its WWDC keynote (how its latest OS is in most phones unlike Android's). Google, unlike last year, didn't diss Apple at all at Google I/O.

Can we just not do this? I already lived through the "MACS SUX PCS ROOL" 90s, and I don't really want to deal with the modern Android vs. iOS incarnation.

Next, someone will be saying "right tool for the job", a Linux desktop guy will pop in to say "you're both wrong!", some benevolent Windows user will pipe in with "Macs are mostly good for design." I can't remember what gamers would say, but it was probably something equally inane.

To this I all say: No. Stop. There is nothing interesting here to say. We've done this before, and it had more to do with tribal us vs. them simplification than it did with any genuine mature comparative analysis of the options.

But how will they feel Right On The Internet with that sort of perspective?

"All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again."

I think you are not very clear on the meaning of the word disrupt:

interrupt (an event, activity, or process) by causing a disturbance or problem: a rail strike that could disrupt both passenger and freight service.

a disruptive product is a product that breaks with what was before and changes the course of its class of products.

It relates to market share only insofar that it needs enough share of its market to make an impact on it, which is not necessarily a majority.

Now, I think it’s a bit silly trying to say that mobile phones/smartphones/pocketable computers didn’t change after the introduction of the iPhone (see also link below by alanh: http://www.tekgadg.com/storage/Android_before_after_iphone_t..., or check how many phones with and without keys are available today, or the success of the “app store” model).

Apple's disruption is not the hardware, the software, or the integration of the two.

Apple's disruption is spending several hundreds of billions of dollars on marketing to tell people what they could do with the hardware and software.

Androids, Windows Mobile, Blackberry could do everything the iPhone could do, and usually faster, cheaper, and better. But they never told anyone how to do all the cool stuff, or even that the cool stuff was possible. Which is a shame, because most people actually credit Apple with inventing the smartphone, more than a decade after smartphones hit the market.

Oh, here it is. The inevitable "Apple is only successful because of marketing" comment.

Have you even used a mobile web browser before the iPhone?

utter nonsense. rather than regurgitating the same old facts to dispute you, i'll just hope you work for one of my competitors.

If so, why didn't Microsoft spend their money on marketing instead of replacing WM6?

Microsoft targets enterprise customers. Their customers are swayed by personal relationships, not television ads.

Ha. Yes Microsoft targets enterprise customers. By purchasing tons of print ads in PC Magazine etc. Take a look at the SG&A for both companies and you'll see that for a company that doesn't manufacture many tangible goods (the xbox is a blip on the radar compared to Apple's manufacturing) sure spends a lot of money, much of it on advertising:

http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/sga_expense#series=type:co...

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