Hacker News Reader

> product out in front of competition that they knew was coming so they could claim they were "first"

Who was coming? What competition?

They weren't in a race with anyone to release the iPhone. Nobody was even close to what they had with iPhone at the time.

View on HN

You don't think that completely dismissing the other smartphone makers would have been foolish?

Do you really think Android popped up a year later after the release of the iPhone and nobody knew about its development?

Android didn't start at Google. Google bought them in 2005, three years before the iPhone was released.

Prototype Android looked like a BlackBerry.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/24/android-was-born-on...

Those were early prototypes. Google didn't make it into a touch interface in a single year.

The exact UI doesn't matter anyway. Apple knew they had something and they knew Google had resources to compete. Don't forget that these companies compete over hiring talent as well.

Apple never, ever planned on only web apps and there's no evidence of that.

Android was on track to be a Blackberry clone with no touch screen until they got wind of what Apple was up to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com