iPhone at Ten - Computerphile

The iPhone is ten years old, Dr Bagley looks at life before the ubiquitous smartphone

This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

[pmarreck]

10 years ago on iphone launch day I walked into an Apple store to buy some power adapters for a trip to England the next day, entirely not expecting to buy anything but (I was quite happy with my Nokia smartphone). Then I tried one and within maybe a minute decided I had to have one right then and there, and walked out with one (and the power adapters). Then went to England where I proceeded to rack up over $1000 in roaming charges, which were then dismissed by AT&T because at the time there was actually no way in the software to turn roaming off LOL

[DJDavid]

Based on the title I thought this was going to be about children getting tech too early

[arkadianriver]

I think what's clear is that Apple didn't come up with the great ideas, they just designed and engineered the ideal solutions very well. I really thought Palm/Handspring would dominate the market.

[jacobjonsson]

Well, you can film computerphile on an iPhone, but please don't :)

[robertnicoll]

Greatest phone of all time?
Trends it has set?
Android had cut, copy and paste and real multi tasking years before iPhone.
The only trends that come to mind when i think of Apple...
-Buying a spare spare Lightning cable costs 5 times more than buying a cable for any other phone.
-Eliminating ports to favour their own pods and forcing the need for an apple adaptor to use real headphones.
-The trend of being the most expensive devices on the market.
-The trend of being un-repairable, even when a fault is trivial, with Apple official repairs really consisting of offering a refurb and never seeing any data again from your original phone.
Nothing there to be proud of.
You're surely trolling, biased or ill informed, either way there is a lot wrong with this video.
I will admit to being an android fan, but am well and truly objective.
Marketing is about the only thing that has made the iPhone popular, the phone itself is rubbish compared to anything else.

[stuartspence]

The video needs a bit more research and effort before filming to make it worthwhile.

[ffggddss]

Son-of-a-gun! That iPhone 3G was also my first cell phone! Bought on Black Friday* 2008. Its predecessor was a Palm Tungsten-2 PDA (which wasn't a phone).

*For non-Americans, Black Friday is a nickname for the day after (US) Thanksgiving – the 4th Thursday of November – when stores have traditionally held special sales to draw crowds, with the object of increasing revenues to put their balance sheets "in the black" for the year.

[jamesowens]

So what was this video about? Apple had better marketing. That's the point?

[scientificakosmos]

member of the pc master race: WHY???!!! also the script was very well written...

[Freddan]

What is the purpose of this video? He is just blabbering for 8 minutes.

[whoisjrj]

" ....from that you got your Android phones, your Windows phones....I'm sure someone still uses them."
Lol

[zirgaoec]

Am I the only one not seeing the point of the video? All I can see is someone who has done his homework in a rush rambling about how Apple is so great and amazing for a couple of minutes. Nothing more.

[goeiecool]

Hmmm... Austin Evans just made a video on the original iPhone, what a coincidence.
EDIT: Ohhh it's it's ten year anniversary that makes sense.

[arsenixa]

Yes let's celebrate the beginning of the end of freedom

[LikelyToBeEatenByAGrue]

uh oh. you said something about apple. the android zealots will have you now.

[AgnostosGnostos]

The first affordable computers for the general public had ARM processors. BBC micro, Acorn, etc
Afterwards intel 286 architecture the cheap PC clones, DOS and the Windows dominated everything. Mac computers with their RISC resisted but weren't really successful.
iPhone and afterwards the iPad were the revenge of the underestimated for many many years ARM processor. The ARM CPU was used with windows mobile OS enabled mobile phones and Windows CE pocket PC. Both weren't successful enough.

The iPhone initially the first year didn't allowed third party apps. However with the introduction of App Store serious individual professionals programmers started to work with ARM processor. Very uccessful programs for ARM CPU started to appear on iPhone after three decades.
The ARM architecture was made in Britain and is a great example of British ingenuity without the support of huge companies

[raekane]

I got a iPhone back in early 2008, after the price drop, but before the App Store. It was my first smartphone, but I owned a Palm and a Win Mobile PDA. I thought it was cool over all but the omission video recording was odd. I wasn't expecting HD quality, but I couldn't even record VGA quality. The iPhone 3G after it was such a minor upgrade in contrast to the modern "tick-tock" cycle. I eventually moved to Android.

[kakol]

Reading the comments here show how misinformed everyone is.

[MrKristian]

You buy an iPhone and gets restricted from accessing the WHOLE phone. Giving full access (Jailbreaking) is considered illegal? Why even bother, build your own instead, that's my goal.

[Trollygag]

Before the iPhone came out, the big thing was the Blackberry, and the Blackberry was still more popular than the iPhone even until 2011. The first Android based phones came out with keyboards in addition to the capacitive touch screens, so the iPhone clearly didn't have that much of a design impact since few of its features were adopted (and only on the flagship phones, the keyboard models are still pretty common) until maybe 10 years later and it is still dominated in terms of market share by its other competitor.

iPhone was one of 3 major platforms and design philosophies, and in its entire history, iPhone has never once been the dominant platform or philosophy. I think it's 'the phone Hollywood likes' and the one that has the most die-hard fan club, and why it gets a lot of attention, but I can't see where it was paradigm changing given it was only doing stuff other companies were already doing or didn't do later anyways.