Linked by David Adams on Wed 2nd Jul 2008 16:09 UTC, submitted by tbutler
"A year ago, page after page of ink was spilled by prophets of doom fretting about the iPhone and how it would surely not be as good as this or that other phone. Were they right or did the first year of the iPhone live up to its hype?"
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Member since:
2005-07-06
I think, the most part, it lived up to the hype. Before the iPhone, most phones were terrible. It wasn't necessarily the hardware that was terrible (Razr was an incredibly well designed phone, although Motorola for the most part haven't been able to pull off again), it was the software. Nokia probably had the best phone software. Windows Mobile was pretty bad. It would crash, you'd need the stylus, and doing things on it was just painful.
iPhone changed the game. It certainly wasn't perfect. It was limited, but what it did do, it did exceptionally well. From visual voice mail to browsing (although the Edge network was painful), it was light years ahead of the other guys.
It was so well done, that it made one almost mad that the other companies hadn't pulled this off.
Even if you hate the very idea of the iPhone, and will never buy one, it's existence in the market has spurred the competitors off their collective asses. A slew of new phones come out that aren't necessarily imitators of the iPhone, but they were developed to compete at the level of the iPhone. Which is a pretty high bar.
I love my iPhone. The software is great, visual voicemail is amazing, and it's a well designed piece of hardware (I trained for a marathon with it, including a couple of spills on concrete). Perfect, no. Great, yes. Insanely great? Perhaps.