We take for granted what has already been invented. (The impact of the original iPhone.)
A lot of tech blogs have been linking to videos of Apple’s 2007 keynote, during which the iPhone was revealed. It’s worth watching it if you’ve time, not only to see one of the finest Steve Jobs keynotes (he was in great form that day), but also to remind yourself of just what happened in 2007.
People easily forget. We take for granted what has already been invented, and we consider smart, intuitive, sleek solutions the ‘obvious’ way. This, it’s argued, is now the way things have to be—there is no other way. At least, that’s the argument put forward by many of the current slew of companies watching everything Apple does, and then scrambling to copy it as quickly as possible. Smartphones, tablets, so-called ‘ultrabooks’ and even the Apple TV (hardly a massive success for Apple) have all been mercilessly ripped off in recent years. (For some particularly blatant examples, check Inspired by Apple.)
Now watch that keynote. Remember what smartphones were like in 2007, and how annoying and fiddly they were to use. It’s telling when you watch the various Jobs reveals; the audience gasps in astonishment and is genuinely thrilled by the iPhone’s various gestures, such as slide-to-unlock and pinch-zoom. This isn’t the usual ‘Steve said something so we must cheer’ that often went on at Apple events—this is genuine excitement at something new, something different, and something revolutionary.
But we forget. Multitouch is obvious. Pinch-zoom is obvious. Slide-to-unlock is obvious. The manner in which Apple designed its iPhone, its iPad, and even iOS itself? Obvious. Then why didn’t anyone else do this stuff first? Why did it take Apple’s iPhone to kickstart a smartphone and tablet revolution? If the slew of cloners out there all argue Apple didn’t really invent anything new, why didn’t they have iPhone- and iPad-like devices in the market before Apple? Why did Google’s Android rather rapidly shift from being a BlackBerry to an iPhone if the iPhone was so obvious?
The only obvious things for me here are that people need to think a little more before dismissing out of hand Apple’s current anger at practically every other major tech company effectively lifting its designs and ideas and reselling them, and that its rivals—with a few exceptions—need to learn to iterate and innovate, rather than just getting out their photocopiers yet again.
Thank you for writing this, it gets tiring reading articles and comments about how Apple’s patent disputes are because Apple is scared to compete. Apple effectively acts as the R&D division for the whole consumer electronics industry, everyone rips off Apple with very few exceptions.
I predict that when the Apple TV is launched, it won’t be long before Samsung and others copy it and then conveniently forget where the ideas come from. In fact before the iPad was released, most of the CE companies admitted that were waiting to see what Apple came up with before they launched their copy cat products. Do you remember that when iPad 2 came out, Samsung announced that it was going back to the drawing board in order to improve their tablet offering. As Apple’s lawyers put it “shameless”.
Anyway, thanks again for setting the record straight.
Mike
Good points, all. It’s a discussion (read “flame war”) that is ongoing and frustrating to read, in that there is no end of detractors willing to go back to the first vacuum tube to show that Apple can’t take credit for anything, because Apple just tweaked what went before. This tack is seemingly predicated on the notion that the only thing that matters is hardware, and that making devices useful, easy and even elegant thru a thoughtful and robust UI requires no effort. Which is in invalidated by the point that, as you’ve noted, if this was so easy, why did Apple have to do it?
I agree that Apple deserves a massive amount of credit for the development of the iPhone. It’s interesting that you mention ‘obvious’ because as soon as I saw how the touch interaction worked in the keynote I thought that was obviously how it should work. Of course it wasn’t really obvious because no one else came up with it before but how naturally it worked made it feel like that.
Where I have trouble is the notion that Apple’s competitors shouldn’t have attempted to copy the touch interaction. If the patent rules had worked then the iPhone would be the only good smartphone for the lifetime of Apple’s patents which I think is 25 years. I really can’t see that as being good for technology in general and probably not good for Apple either in the long run.
Exact duplication of what Apple is doing (i.e. Samsung’s ‘design’ or AcerCloud) is bad because it reduces the total amount of innovation in the industry. However taking other people’s ideas and building upon them is normal for progress.
The building-on thing (i.e. iteration) is what I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, and I have no problem with that. The thing I get incensed by is companies lifting Apple’s work verbatim—including components that are trademarked—and then arguing that there was no alternative. There are perhaps arguments that some aspects of the gestural model should become standards in short order, to enable interoperability, however, so I concede that point. (That said, I do not see any reason why Apple should not be remunerated for its effort in coming up with these new UI ideas. Judging by what Jobs has said in the past, iOS was in development for at least five years before the iPhone arrived, yet everyone else, for the most part, just nicked what Apple had done, which is rather easier!)
I totally agree that copying the iPhone’s touch interaction was far easier than coming up with it in the first place and that Apple should be rewarded in some way. The difficulty comes in how that should be done. It seems like the normal method is companies choosing to license their patents but Apple doesn’t appear to be interested in this route. I don’t think they should be forced to license either if they don’t want to.
I only solution that occurs to me is radical reform of the patent system and a reduction of the lifetime of a patent to something much more short term, say 3 to 5 years in the technology industry. That would enable a company to exploit it’s innovations to gain a lead without holding up progress indefinitely for everyone else.
In reference to the reduction of a patent’s lifetime to a short period of 3-5 years:
This idea would be good if not for the current pace of our court system. A major IP litigation case (including motions, discovery, hearings, etc.) can take years. It would make it much harder to protect your patent if any attempts to fight infringement would last longer than that patent itself.
The reason that Apple managed to get these technologies into a phone first was because they didn’t have to worry about existing products.
When you look at Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry OS, each of these had an existing catalogue of third-party apps. If Nokia/Microsoft/RIM suddenly made huge changes to their platforms, developers would be screaming. Businesses would be upset too, as they’d need to buy new copies of the apps (which were expensive at the time) to run on the new hardware.
Apple didn’t have to worry about any of this. They could design an OS from the ground up and do whatever they wanted with it. They could make use of the increasingly-powerful mobile hardware. And that’s exactly what they did.
Apple do deserve a lot of credit for getting things moving when they did. The industry needed a good shake-up, rather than being allowed to make incremental improvements year after year.
The big question is: if Apple hadn’t made the iPhone, would this huge shift have occurred? I think it would have, but it would have been delayed by several years. Several of the big name manufacturers didn’t have a smartphone platform, or were using someone else’s, and could easily have decided to create their own. Android was already in development, and while their direction at the time is a trade secret, there are indications that they were leaning towards a large-screen format rather than a Blackberry-style device. Any of these players could have started a shift.
So yes, Apple get a pat on the back, for having the opportunity and resources to make they move they did. Their efforts made a huge difference in the cellphone industry. I just don’t think it’s right to assume that nobody else could have done what they did.
“Android was already in development, and while their direction at the time is a trade secret, there are indications that they were leaning towards a large-screen format rather than a Blackberry-style device.”
The photographs online suggest otherwise, showing early versions of Android as a Blackberry-style device, with a keyboard and cursor-oriented screen nav. It’s only months after the iPhone appeared that the massive shift occurred in that platform. Given Google’s magpie nature, it’s too much of a coincidence. Frankly, the only player to do something truly original is Microsoft, but it’s barely scratched the surface of the potential of Metro, and it’s lumbered it with a stupid name to tie it back to Windows.
And on legacy, I don’t buy that argument. Apps existed, but the ecosystem was minute compared to now. Had a company been capable of doing a quantum shift, it would have; but companies were—and, typically, are—more interested in the status quo. My guess is that aspects of touch would have happened by now, but we’d still have the majority of devices with keyboards, many with styluses, and most with poor UX.
“The photographs online suggest otherwise, showing early versions of Android as a Blackberry-style device, with a keyboard and cursor-oriented screen nav.”
What online pictures? The online pictures show the WM esque prototype (not BB esque) and touch only prototypes at the same time.
But we forget. Multitouch is obvious. -> Totally obvious way before the iPhone. And not only on phones, Surface anyone?
Pinch-zoom is obvious. -> Obvious and showed on a phone before the iPhone. And not only on phones, Surface anyone?
Slide-to-unlock is obvious. -> Obvious and patent denied because of prior art
Perhaps is not because it was obvious but because you seem to not know much apart from Apple related technology
@Oletros: The in-the-wild hardware prototype of AndroidBerry is very well known. Given the timescales for the release of touch Android devices, there is nothing to suggest it happened concurrently with iOS. Had modern-style Android devices shown up around the same time as the iPhone, the argument would be stronger. Of course, if you can find—unlike the rest of the internet—concrete proof of working prototypes of modern Android devices from the same time period, I’d love to see them.
Also, cheers for the insult. Makes it all worthwhile. Also makes me think that I’ll without doubt be introducing a comments policy this year, so thanks for helping me make a decision on that.
What insult? Saying that perhaps you seem too Apple centric is insulting you?
You didn’t knew that there was pinch to zoom before, you didn’t knew that there were multi touch before, you didn’t knew that there were slide to unlock before. Where is the insult?
And to prove more my point, that picture “before and after” has been debunked a thousand times. There were BOTH prototypes at the same time
@Oletros: You’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions about me and my knowledge, which also providing scant few sources for your claims about things like Android prototypes. The point I’m making—and have always made—is that Apple has been a company of iteration, and most others merely copy. Some aspects of iOS were theorised prior to Apple utilising them (such as pinch-to-zoom being talked about as an idea in a TED talk), but no-one else was working with them and releasing them in the wild. Had an iPhone-like Android device arrived before the iPhone or around the same time, it would be easy to dismiss the similarities as concurrent development—as coincidence. However, the timescales are precisely those that have since happened elsewhere in things like so-called ultrabooks and tablets, where a company sees something it likes and effectively closes it.
I’m not suggesting—and have never suggested—that Apple invents everything out of thin air. In fact, if you’ve read other commentary from me in Mac and Windows publications, you’ll know I talk about the company more often taking existing concepts and rapidly evolving them. The issue I have is that they—things that have been iterated and things that have been invented by Apple—suddenly become fair game for direct copying. It’s OK, according to many pundits, that Samsung blatantly copies Apple, because everything Apple does is obvious anyway. It’s OK, claim many, that practically every tablet looks like an iPad, because that design is obvious, despite prior tablets looking wildly varied by comparison. (And, as I’ve also said many times, I find it very interesting that—from an OS standpoint at least—Microsoft, of all companies, has innovated, creating something new and beautiful in Metro. Android, on the other hand…)
And, yeah, “you seem to not know much apart from Apple related technology” is clearly a derogatory comment, so there’snot much point in arguing otherwise.