It didn't multitask, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time had at least the appearance of multitasking. It didn't have the ability to install any additional software, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time handled third-party software just fine. It didn't even have a copy/paste function, even though [WTF? Srsly, Apple?].
All of these things were eventually corrected by Apple, but it was pretty awful until they were corrected: For quite some time, the iPhone was just a rather fancy touchscreen music player with telephone and SMS programs tacked on.
(More damning: All of these things were corrected very quickly by third parties via jailbreaks. Some of us were having a ball with first-gen IOS devices very early on in the game, but Apple wasn't any help in getting that accomplished.)
I guess I (and to be honest, reviewers at large at the time) just have a very different definition of "pretty terrible". Sure, it was easy to see how it wasn't "fully complete", but I think that is true of literally every brand new product.
And to take two of your examples, multitasking and 3rd party software, yeah, other pocket computers had them, and they generally sucked hard (see, Windows Mobile). Even the lack of copy/paste - other phones had them, but there was (and honestly still is) considerable debate over how it should be implemented given multitouch was new.
Yeah, but the first iPod touch was great. It came out only 3 months after the iPhone.
It seems like the Vision Pro 1 has the M2 so that when the Vision, or Vision Air comes out, it will be at least as powerful as the first Pro. And the Pro 2 can have the M3.
First iPod Touch was even worse: It had all of the limitations of the iPhone, plus it additionally lacked cellular connectivity, messaging, voice, Bluetooth, GPS, speaker, Bluetooth, and camera.
The first iPhone didn't have GPS either. No iPods had speakers back then so that wasn't missed, you just used your earbuds. It was great for browsing the web and media consumption, since you either had WiFi or you didn't (no slow Edge network to tease you). Once the App store came out you had Instapaper for offline reading, and Google Voice for messaging/calls.
You're right. The first iPhone did not have GPS. But it did have the connectivity to make other geolocation services useful, at least in a "Where the fuck am I at?" sense. (And the iPod Touch also had wifi-based geolocation services that were spooky-good, if it was online somehow.)
But from various PalmOS devices to whatever Android device is in my pocket right now, carrying wired headphones has never been a thing for me for whatever reason.
So as a Google Voice user since it was still called GrandCentral, having Google Voice available on a Wifi-connected touchscreen pocket music player called an iPod Touch was simply never very useful to me: The OG iPod Touch was lousy as a telephone, since it lacked all of the basic parts (like a microphone or an earpiece) that made telephones useful, and SMS was not yet in its heyday back then either.
I got much better use of the service with my dumb phone with T9 text input and transcription of voicemails to SMS, and my dumb phone worked anywhere instead of just where I could find a Wifi network.
Jailbroken, the iPod was an amazing pocket computer with a brilliant display, thin profile, and exceptional responsiveness to touch input, especially with third-party apps and improvements installed. It was fun having a real *nix userland installed on it, and it sure seemed novel to SSH from it.
By default, though? Almost useless except as a music player -- a task that previous iPods did better.
(I mostly used my OG iPod Touch to take offline notes. It did OK at this, but previously-used PalmOS devices did better in terms of input speed and portability of those notes.
Even relatively high-end aftermarket car stereos at the time were afraid of it: "Oh, why sure I can play music with your iPod!
>For quite some time, the iPhone was just a rather fancy touchscreen music player with telephone and SMS programs tacked on.
It had the only truly usable mobile web browser. Windows Mobile's IE was trash, and the browsers on Palm OS, Blackberry and Symbian were laughable. This was the killer app (especially on Wifi, EDGE was not great).
It didn't multitask, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time had at least the appearance of multitasking. It didn't have the ability to install any additional software, even though other pocket computers for a Long Time handled third-party software just fine. It didn't even have a copy/paste function, even though [WTF? Srsly, Apple?].
All of these things were eventually corrected by Apple, but it was pretty awful until they were corrected: For quite some time, the iPhone was just a rather fancy touchscreen music player with telephone and SMS programs tacked on.
(More damning: All of these things were corrected very quickly by third parties via jailbreaks. Some of us were having a ball with first-gen IOS devices very early on in the game, but Apple wasn't any help in getting that accomplished.)