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The Moment That Changed Everything
This week marks the 12th anniversary of the introduction of the iPhone (it wasn’t actually released until June of 2007). Is the iPhone the most important invention ever made? It’s definitely the most successful, catapulting Apple from a niche electronics maker to the most valuable company in the world (at least temporarily).
The iPhone is responsible for creating thousands of ancillary businesses (arguably, including this one) and an untold number of jobs. The iPhone changed politics (could Trump have been elected without Twitter?), dating, family dynamics (“son, no texting at the table!”), and made free communication over any distance ubiquitous.
That said, the iPhone has also killed attention spans, made movies and the theater less pleasant, and harmed countless other activities.
So, are we better off or worse due the late Mr. Jobs’ invention? Discuss.
Published in General
I’ve never owned any Apple product and never will on general principle. They are marketing hype and puffery. Nothing more. Nothing less. Totally agree about Apple not being technology.
The idea suggested that the iPhone is what brought about flat-rate communications pricing over long distances is nonsense. Email had done that. The breakup of AT&T and competition with other cellphone providers did that. Skype predated the the iPhone.
Not so much for pets.com (that adds friction to a sale and retailers do not like that). two-factor authentication (2FA) is offered (not required) for financial services (eg Vanguard as stated above, banks, and credit unions); Google; Microsoft. The idea is that is require something-you-know and something-you-have, accounts are protected against social engineering and lost phones. Someday, someone will think of something more convenient.
Young people were doing that long before the iPhone. I remember being amazed at how fast people could text back when they were using just the number pad (“for C hit 2 three times”). I think that is where a lot of the abbreviations came from. And for email and Twitter the Blackberry keyboards seemed easier to use.
That said, the iPhone definitely changed everything. With a blackberry, half of your device was a keypad so the screens were tiny and trying to navigate around the internet with up-down arrows was frustrating to say the least. Touch screens, bigger displays, the ability to develop apps, these are things that every competitor had to copy in order to compete. Today smart devices are even replacing laptops for some employees.
As for the “son, no texting at the table!” quote, today you often see parents ignoring their kids while they stare at their iPhone. Technology so easy to use that even a grown-up can use it.
The computers are more secure, but I really dread paying extra for whatever you get on the other stuff. I do use an iPod because it’s easy for me. I see a lot of complaining about the new Windows operating system, but I don’t know anything about it.
Apple just made the iMac more premium, which does me no good.
I just heard a security guy recommend getting a chrome book for secure financial transactions etc.
This is basically a myth that Apple doesn’t discourage. Hackers target Windows machines because they dominate the market.
It’s a Willie Sutton universe. You rob banks because that’s where they keep the money.
Go on.
I meant in our lifetimes.
This is really a silly comment. The Mac platform has been a favored platform for scientists, filmmakers, graphic designers, photographers and others because Apple invested the resources to make the OS not just more intuitive and easier to navigate than Windows-based machines but also invested resources in really understanding typography, color matching and calibration which several years ago, the braintrust in Redmond hadn’t a clue about (I know this because I witnessed a Microsoft engineer laughed off of a stage when he couldn’t answer simple questions about Microsoft’s efforts in color matching and calibration). I’ve worked on both platforms over the years and the Windows platform was forced year after year to become more intuitive and versatile precisely because it sought year after year to catch up with the MacOS. I really find it amusing that there is so much animosity toward the Mac platform and Apple in general. I can understand it more nowadays given Apple’s more strident social justice warrior positions which Steve Jobs artfully avoided. I’m old enough to remember that Apple and many of its technology partners completely transformed various industry segments – photo retouch, typesetting, pre-press – and gave tools to designers and art directors to bypass otherwise very costly third-party services thus saving their clients money. Hardly “hype” or “puffery” since many of those service industry segments had to change or adapt or close up shop.
The basic fact with regards to the iPhone is that by eliminating hard plastic keys it simplified a cell phone’s use and forced other manufacturers to change. The ones that didn’t lost marketshare and eventually went out of business. I had a Blackberry and a Palm Treo which were considered state-of-the-art at the time. The iPhone was easier and more elegant. Question, when would Samsung and others have made the leap to a cell phone without keys? Apple at least took the risk to take that first leap.
Supposedly you have more privacy with an iPhone.
I’d say the iPhone made people worse off in the western/developed world, on average
But everywhere else in the world, people are much better off than before thanks to smartphones
Define “more privacy.” If you’re going to talk about your proprietary business while sitting in the stall of the airport bathroom no amount of technology will save you from your own stupidity.
All voice calls using cell service frequency hop (Thanks to Heddy Lamar) so iPhone v Android isn’t an issue there.
I think that’s more about how Google and Apple use the data they get from spying on you.
I have an equally low opinion of Microsoft. I’m from a workstation world with some serious computational power back when I did this kind of stuff running simulations. Both got the architecture all wrong because of computing power and space in their infancy and users are still paying for it.
Apparently nuclear fission has gotten so advanced that the latest generation of commercial-ready reactors are supposed to have most of the benefits of fusion power. Or so I’ve heard.
That’s kind of depressing. The greatest invention of our lifetime is basically a toy?
Only if you use it as one…considering it is millions of times faster in processing power than the computers used by NASA during the Apollo machines. Oh, the things we take for granted. Apart from the occasional phone call, I use my iPhone to control my thermostat, monitor my home’s surveillance cameras, operate my home entertainment center, take high resolution photographs, record high resolution video, stream music wirelessly via Bluetooth to my car’s stereo system, listen to podcasts and music, catch up on the news, time the food that I cook, wake me up in the morning, translate foreign languages, check the weather anywhere on the planet, navigate a trip, record voice memos…but apart from all that, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Not that any of them will ever get built.
I never realized until I read the beginning of the Stephen Ambrose book about the Transcontinental Railway what a gamechanger that was. Changed going cross country from a weeks-to-months long hazardous journey overland or by sea, to a few days.
Smart phones obviously create a lot of efficiency and value.
I always thought it was interesting when the Windows users scoffed at my Mac because they considered it a “toy,” yet I rarely use it for play. It’s been the main tool in my adult working life — and it definitely is for work. Meanwhile, all the Windows users were busy turning their computers into the best gaming systems they could afford.
O, irony!
I don’t think I’ve heard that sort of scoffing since Apple began taking over the world with iPads and iPhones, and all the PC users quietly adopted them.
“Only if you use it as one…”
Not for me. Because I have everything on my iPhone. I always know where it is. With me. Flip phones etc. generally ended up in a drawer and were rarely used.
The second part (kids) we agree on.
Not on phone calls. Apple does not sell your data to third parties or advertise to you in their built in apps. Unlike certain social networks and phones with operating systems built by search engine companies.
Friendly reminder: Ricochet does not sell your info nor track your movement around the web.
The great tech burst to productivity was long over by the time the iPhone came around.
I have no idea what that sentence means. How do you define “tech burst”? How do you define “productivity”? How do you define “toy”? Telephone technology is over 100 years old. The first cell phones were larger than bricks and resembled WWII-era field phones and could do two basic things…make a call and receive a call. Referring to technologically sophisticated devices that fit in the palm of your hand and that have the capabilities that modern smartphones have as ‘toys’ pretty much demonstrates that you either don’t appreciated what you have or don’t understand what you have and what it’s capable of doing. Blackberry and Trio were quickly surpassed in productivity and functionality after the iPhone and its competing models were introduced. It is true that smartphones can’t necessarily make someone smart.
It never ceases to amaze me that people don’t appreciate how amazing the technology is that we can put in our pockets. Because of the wireless (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) capabilities of today’s smartphones and the plethora of new apps that have come to market since iPhone was introduced that can do everything from adjusting the lighting or temperature of your home, program your sprinkler system, activate your home alarm systems, monitor surveillance cameras, provide music to specific rooms or every room in your home, pay for purchases in stores, transact purchases from customers for people who sell products or services out in the field, engage in videoconferencing, stream a video from the phone to a large screen TV via a set top box, shoot, record and transmit high rez photos and videos in real time over social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, provide accurate GPS coordinates to help you navigate just about anywhere in the world, and on and on and on…that people still consider these expanding technological devices as toys.
Jordan Peterson speaks about this sort of ingratitude when he discusses socialists who endlessly trash capitalism but who wouldn’t for a second give up their smartphones, computers, home entertainment systems, or increasingly computerized cars.
Pathetic.
Apple pay and Google pay are going to solve a ton of problems if they can increase the adoption.
I don’t have a smart phone. Should I be grateful anyway?
Chafing at the electronic leash, eh?
For other things you may take for granted..yes