Hang on here. Let's be fair. I don't know who invented touchscreens or pinch to zoom or whatever and I don't much care.
But it's Apple who have come along and made mobile devices that are nice to use - very nice. No one else was rushing to take a chance on making an iphone. If it wasn't for them I reckon we would still be stuck with devices like my Nokia 6680, which is admittedly rubbish and with each passing day becomes more annoying to use. I've stuck it out for ages but gradually, very gradually, I can hear the call of an HTC Desire.

Before this I experimented with a Palm Tungsten PDA - overall it wasn't great. You had to use the stylus and learn that grafiti thing. And there was no itunes equivalent, no desire to connect with the customer and installing programs was tedious and would be buggy when you did. It didn't make me productive and it wasn't much fun either.

Isn't the digital landscape that more fertile for everyone now thanks to Apple?

@Farhad2000 - just to be clear there's no way they're forcing you to buy their products. I'm not using any - the limitations just rub me the wrong way.

>> ^campionidelmondo:

>> ^dag:
I would also posit that the same thing has happened, albeit in a smaller way, with the iPhone and iPad. finger optimised UI, Flick to scroll, bounce back scrolling, pinch to zoom and more are innovations out of Apple's skunkworks. These innovations exist on Android and Pre phones - but to assume that this would have happened without Apple is naive.

Nope sorry, Apple did not "invent" all of these things. I know about flicking and pinch to zoom being around before the iPhone, there's even a video of a desk-sized tabled demo employing those tecniques around here, but I can't find it right now.
Good thing Apple did not invent the mouse cursor, or else we all would have to use some weird thingy like a crosshair or sth because you can bet your ass they would've patented it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I'm sure you could find some technology demo out there that had something similar. And you're right that Apple didn't invent the mouse, or even the windows metaphor - but my point is that we (the people) weren't using mice and windows before Apple came out with the Mac - and likewise we weren't pinching and zooming or flicking to scroll until Apple invented the iPhone.

>> ^campionidelmondo:

>> ^dag:
I would also posit that the same thing has happened, albeit in a smaller way, with the iPhone and iPad. finger optimised UI, Flick to scroll, bounce back scrolling, pinch to zoom and more are innovations out of Apple's skunkworks. These innovations exist on Android and Pre phones - but to assume that this would have happened without Apple is naive.

Nope sorry, Apple did not "invent" all of these things. I know about flicking and pinch to zoom being around before the iPhone, there's even a video of a desk-sized tabled demo employing those tecniques around here, but I can't find it right now.
Good thing Apple did not invent the mouse cursor, or else we all would have to use some weird thingy like a crosshair or sth because you can bet your ass they would've patented it.

>> ^dag:

I would also posit that the same thing has happened, albeit in a smaller way, with the iPhone and iPad. finger optimised UI, Flick to scroll, bounce back scrolling, pinch to zoom and more are innovations out of Apple's skunkworks. These innovations exist on Android and Pre phones - but to assume that this would have happened without Apple is naive.


Nope sorry, Apple did not "invent" all of these things. I know about flicking and pinch to zoom being around before the iPhone, there's even a video of a desk-sized tabled demo employing those tecniques around here, but I can't find it right now.

Good thing Apple did not invent the mouse cursor, or else we all would have to use some weird thingy like a crosshair or sth because you can bet your ass they would've patented it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

@Farhad2000 - looking back it's easy to declare that the GUI would have happened anyway, but I would posit that there are certain crucial points where innovation has moved everybody forward in a big leap. I know that Windows has been around for most of your life - and must seem like it always has been - but I remember when "windowing" didn't exist - and the joy of discovering how a mouse works, trash cans, WYSIWYG, etc, etc. I also remember what platform that was on. All credit to Xerox PARC - but Apple brought you the window metaphor, mice and pretty much all the symbology on your Windows® desktop. (wallpaper, screen savers, draggable icons, control panels, paint programs). If Apple didn't change the paradigm of how we use computers at that point, then I would argue with your definition of paradigm changing.

I would also posit that the same thing has happened, albeit in a smaller way, with the iPhone and iPad. finger optimised UI, Flick to scroll, bounce back scrolling, pinch to zoom and more are innovations out of Apple's skunkworks. These innovations exist on Android and Pre phones - but to assume that this would have happened without Apple is naive.

There is a current skunkworks project with a UCAV that does the same thing though.