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I dunno, touch-only had been done before (Newton, Palm), and I think it would have surfaced again. The UI/UX Apple built on top of the technology that was in everyone's (manufacturers) hands, I still think, was the biggest factor in pushing things forward industry-wide.

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As important was Apple's brand power. Everyone already had an iPod in their pocket and loved it. That gave them legitimacy to set terms with carriers.

Both had a stylus. Possibly, we could have ended up with many humans embedding a tiny piece of hardware in their index fingers, so that they wouldn’t have to carry a stylus around ;-)

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