hey guys it's Greg with Apple explained and today we're gonna explore what life
was like before the iPhone existed because if you were born in the 2000s
the iPhone and its related technology has likely always been a part of your
life but it's important to understand what things were like before the iPhone
in order to truly appreciate how far we've come today now this video topic
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see next so before the iPhone was introduced in 2007 many industries
looked a lot different than they do today
and you may be surprised to discover how products worked and how certain tasks
were accomplished without the use of modern technology that the iPhone
popularized and I want to start with a multi-touch display which was perhaps
the most influential feature of the original iPhone because although
touchscreens had already been invented very few were designed to be used with
your fingers instead the vast majority of touchscreen devices before the iPhone
had what were called resistive displays that came with styluses in order to be
used with precision in fact an entire industry of these devices began in the
90s with something called the PDA interestingly Apple themselves had
pioneered this market with their Newton message pad first released in 1993 and
while it was considered very innovative for its time the Newton didn't work as
advertised its handwriting recognition software was very unreliable and it sold
for $700 which is about $1200 today so needless to say many customers felt it
was overpriced but the Newton wasn't the only touchscreen PDA to be released
because in 1997 the more affordable Palm Pilot was introduced and enjoyed much
more commercial success than the Newton and as this touchscreen technology
became more affordable it started to be utilized by products and other
categories for example in 2006 the Nintendo DS featured a stylus based
touchscreen similar to what was seen on PDAs in the 90s but the following year
in 2007 the iPhone turned the concept of the touchscreen
on its head because it featured what's called a capacitive multi-touch display
and this means it responded through contact with a finger as opposed to a
resistive touchscreen which responded to pressure from any object like a stylus
and this new technology had implications that many companies weren't ready to
address the biggest being if you interact with a touchscreen with your
finger you have to build a completely new operating system that's optimized
for touch rather than previous operating systems
like on PDAs or on computers that require the precision of the tip of a
cursor or stylus and this brings me to the second influential feature of the
iPhone had and that is its touch based operating system that included inertial
scrolling and multi-touch elements like pinch to zoom but perhaps the most
important aspect of the iPhones operating system was that it felt
natural to use since it mimicked interactions we have with objects in
real life for example when you flick a marble how fast and far it goes depends
on how hard you flick it so when you flick through your contacts on your
iPhone you expect the movement of the page to react to the speed of your flick
and executing this concept successfully is part of what set the iPhone apart
from its competition so when other smartphone companies saw the iPhones
impressive software they were forced to go back to the drawing board and come up
with ways to make multi-touch based smartphones of their own and this helped
push the entire software industry forward by prioritizing a natural fluid
interface rather than trying to provide the most features of any smartphone but
the iPhone didn't just help simplify its competition's operating systems it also
helps simplify their hardware because before the iPhone smartphones were
covered in buttons function buttons keyboard buttons control buttons in
navigation buttons which left very little room for the display so part of
what made the iPhones design so stunning was the fact that it had just one button
on the front the home button and that left space for a 3.5 inch multi-touch
display which was considered huge at the time and again this prompted other
smartphone manufacturers to put more screen on their phones and less buttons
but this technology wasn't only used in smartphones
of touchscreens began to be adopted by cars video game systems tablets
computers appliances kiosks and more now there is one other hardware feature that
may sound insignificant but actually killed an entire industry and that was
the camera because if you remember back before the iPhone it was very common to
own a digital camera in addition to your cell phone and iPod but when smartphones
like the iPhone featured a built-in camera that shot photos comparable to
traditional point-and-shoot cameras people stopped carrying them around and
therefore stopped buying them and the effect of this behavior can be seen
today since the most popular camera in the world is the iPhones camera and
Apple has even highlighted this feature with several shot on the iPhone
marketing campaigns so considering all the devices the iPhone has replaced it's
easy to see how convenient our lives have become because no longer do you
have to listen to music on your iPod while texting friends on your cell phone
and carrying around a digital camera to capture those special moments instead we
use different apps to accomplish these tasks all of which run on one device
your iPhone and that brings me to something else that made the iPhone
thousands of times more capable than any device before it and that is the App
Store a place where any third-party app developer could create in submit apps
for download on the iPhone and this was something never seen before in the
mobile phone industry yeah there were a handful of third-party apps that could
be installed on some smart phones but it was nothing like the marketplace that
the app store introduced which grew to offer millions of free or low-cost
third-party apps and this completely altered the way we get things done so
instead of using MapQuest on our computers we use the Maps app on our
phones and instead of looking for movie times on Yahoo we just downloaded
Fandango where we could not only look up movie times but also buy reserve and
purchase tickets and instead of sitting at our computer and googling restaurants
we just downloaded Yelp where we could not only find restaurants but see the
menu make a reservation get directions and see reviews so it could be said that
the iPhone and its App Store was sort of the second act of the computer
revolution because while computers and the internet made information faster and
easier to access the iPhone took things to the next level
and this is part of the reason why Apple says we're entering the post personal
computer era and I think they're right in fact I'd argue that post PC era has
already begun because if you think about it the amount of time most people spend
in front of their computer has fallen dramatically since iPhones and tablets
have become the most common way to consume content and considering the iPad
in particular it's become more powerful than some models of MacBook Pro and
we're already seeing professional level content creation apps like Photoshop
being made available so your vision for the future would have to be quite
limited not to understand that the ease of use accessibility capabilities and
power of the iPad will soon eclipse that of the personal computer and while some
people may have to hold onto their computer longer than others
eventually virtually all people will be using tablets and the reason why I keep
referring to the iPad rather than tablets in general is because there
really isn't any other tablet in the industry that can compare to the
capabilities and performance of the iPad while retaining a true touch based
operating system and this in large part is due to the iPhone which pioneered iOS
one of the most popular multi-touch operating systems that was originally
intended for the iPad because Jobs admitted that Apple was working on
creating a tablet before a smartphone but when Jobs saw the multi-touch
software running on a prototype display he knew creating a smart phone was much
more important at the time but that shouldn't be misinterpreted as the iPad
not being an important product because that's been a running theme since its
introduction in 2010 many people felt that the iPad was just a larger iPod
touch but Jobs understood the potential the iPad had to disrupt the computer
industry and I think that's exactly where we're headed so with the iPhone
assuring in the touch-based tech revolution I want to take a moment and
reflect on how that's changed the role of technology in most people's lives
the first being how we interact with each other I remember when I was a kid I
would call my friend on a tethered house phone which meant my entire family heard
the conversation but as I got older the ways I've communicated with others has
changed dramatically cell phones meant having a direct
private line to anyone who's number I had and texting made
communication even more private and accessible since I could text at any
time without anyone around me even knowing but internet-based social media
services like Facebook really changed the game because it wasn't just about
communicating anymore it was about sharing certain parts of my life to a
large community of people or vice versa seeing parts of other people's lives in
ways that were never possible before for example if I wanted to send my friend a
photo I took on my digital camera that I'd have to transfer it to my computer
and send it to him through email but today you can literally take a picture
and share it with thousands of people within seconds something that would be
hard to imagine just ten years ago so if you consider how far we've come since
the iPhones introduction who knows where we'll be in the next decade but no
matter where we end up or what we're capable of doing I always think it's
important to look back at where we've been so that is what life was like
before the iPhone and if you want to vote for the next video topic don't
forget to subscribe thanks for watching and I'll see you next time