Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com