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>I feel that many people see today's iPhone and compare it to the watch, but the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.0 had only 2G, no GPS, no app store, a miserable camera, couldn't record videos, no copy & paste, and a lot of flaws that I'm probably forgetting right now.

I'm still scratching my head today how they managed to turn that into a success. I thought for sure with all of those issues it was going to be a flop. I still don't understand why it wasn't.

Because even with all those issues, it was still the best user and developer (once native apps were allowed) experience for a phone at that time.

It had a working web browser.

I had two smart devices at the time. A Windows Mobile iPaq or whatever it called and a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry was the ultimate two-way pager, but the browser experience was MISERABLE. Given that Citibank and JP Morgan owned like 150,000 of the things, you'd think that the browser would render CNBC. Not so!

The Windows Mobile Device was sort of better, but the browser was some sort of scaled IE 5 derivative. It still had a stylus, and a Windows 95 style UI, complete with checkboxes and other awkward UI elements. The only third party app of any use was Google Maps.

The iPhone broke free of the carrier nickle/dime racket, had a good web browser and offered a user experience 10x better than anything else. EDGE was a bummer, but a slow network that would work was better than 3G without anything to do. The touch interface, pinch to zoom, etc was a game changer.

I also had some earlier smartphones (Palm Treo, a couple of HTC PocketPCs running Windows Mobile) and agree that the browser experience was tolerable at best. I think I used Opera Mini and Opera Mobile depending on which ran best on a given device.

Still, there were just so many things I had gotten used to (and not just Google Maps and other nav programs like TomTom). I could still buy those phones without carrier junk if I wanted to pay full price. The main issue was that there weren't as many decent options for prepaid or MVNO deals and my $45/mo Sprint plan came with unlimited 3G so it was as good as any $80+ plan from ATT that I'd have had to get with an iPhone.

Even stuff we take for granted now like listening to streaming radio was missing. I was (and still am) a huge fan of several Shoutcast stations that I used via headphones or plugged into the car when everyone else was paying for XM. I had a tuner card in my home PC with my cable connection hooked up and a server app running so I could skim through my home media library or any live cable station and have it piped to my old Windows Mobile phone.

Hell, you could even make video calls at whatever low resolution the front camera had at the time and there were the precursors to services like Periscope like Qik. The iPhone didn't even let you change the wallpaper or ringtone for eff's sake.

That's not to rag on the stuff they did right. The iPhone wasn't targeted at me. It was targeted at people who used their phones for texting, calls, and maybe email or the early mobile web. Compared to those RAZRs and lower-end Blackberrys, the iPhone didn't really take anything away. It added a much better interface that was smoother and more responsive than anything on those featurephones or my beloved PPC. And yeah, the web browser was the killer feature. Passable web browsing was fine on my WinMo but the iPhone's browser was so much nicer to use.

In the end I just couldn't give up my unlimited 3G, GPS, multitasking, third party apps, or customization options in order to double my bill and pick up an iPhone. Still, I am thankful to this day that they hit everyone else where they were lacking (interface and responsiveness) so those later competitors were forced to address that even as Apple slowly added in the features they were missing from other smart phones.

Nowadays it's almost moot as the insane growth in mobile development has made even $150 contract-free phones capable of all those fancy features.

I think the key is, Apple rev' their product in a year. Had iOS not existed, a Treo would probably still be a thing.

Apple had a very unique position at that time: the had legions of iPod fans, who are relatively wealthy, locked on to the Apple platform(due to music they bought).

Than they used that leverage on at&t , which was the weaker carrier in that time - in return only distributing via at&t - at&t agreed to give Apple full control - a thing unheard of in the industry. They repeated similar tactic in every geography.

That full control was the thing that enabled them to offer the best user/developer experience like matwood says and ride moore's law curve much better than the rest .

  I still don't understand why it wasn't.

I distinctly remember the first iphone presentation and seeing [1] and thinking it was the first phone user interface where there was a clear, obvious way to mute or speakerphone a call without checking a manual or accidentally hanging up.

[1] http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c_m2F_ph_uU/maxresdefault.jpg

>> But just like the other devices, the watch will start small and expand from here.

If you asked futurists how the iphone will 10 years on - they would have predicted a lot of what we have today - because it's based on clear technological trends - moore's law, cheaper/smaller sensors, etc and reasonable use cases - i.e. mobile gaming, mobile info.

But when reading about the potential of the watch, either you hear not so exciting uses(like a remote control for all your smart home devices, instead of a phone), or crazy predictions that's hard to see how get to technologically(the watch will have a small projector, the watch will detect an incoming heart attack).

And even with those crazy projections - it's not clear at all whether those technologies, if they work, would be preferably implemented in a watch.

On the other hand, Apple is great at marketing, so who knows ?

> and a lot of flaws that I'm probably forgetting right now

when the first iPhone was announced, I couldn't help but think of an emergency use case where I could dial 911 on my old nokia even while it is switched off. Now I have to switch on my phone, unlock, open phone app, dialer and then 911. A total of 4 additional steps.

Was this addressed in some way that I am not aware of?

Most phones have emergency lockscreen dialers, heck, some samsung phones have hold-down-button-for-emergency systems. That's besides the point though, what he's pointing out that this part of the iphone was a backtrack in capability compared to his older nokia. Now, we don't compare nokias to smartphones, we compare smartphones (most of which lack that capability) to smartphones, so it's never mentioned.

What phone do you have that requires you to unlock it to make an emergency call?

It has to be powered on, but the iPhone can call 911 from the lockscreen. This was very useful a couple times on the road (where I do my best to minimize non-map viewing phone usage while in motion) before the fingerprint unlock feature was added.

i find it difficult to use as a phone, the speaker is so low i have to raise it into my hear, (maybe its hearing loss)

I do agree that its a nice fitness measurement tool, although i do want to compare the accuracy and precision with other instruments.

Gimme a pip-boy though, full sized, GNU based OS.

As far as I know, it's specifically not supposed to be used as a phone. Making a call from your wrist is a terrible idea if you have to hold your wrist up to your ear or face, or can only use it in speakerphone mode. (using wireless earbuds + microphone would be fine obviously)

yeah, have you gotten Bluetooth headphones to work? My beats don't pair up to them, but my beats also have issues where they just deteriorate around the ear muffs.