I checked a couple of those old reviews and a couple things that seemed to be a common take with the iPhone that definitely aren't holding now:
- incredible amounts of hype
- loving the design
- loving the touchscreen and input (directly contrasting folks worrying about the eye tracking now)
- a sense (at least from cnet and pcmag) that it's really just an overgrown iPod so they keep comparing it to an iPod (compared to the vision where folks get that it's a new category for apple and have good comps outside anyway )
There are definitely similarities in terms of complaining about missing features that apple's probably going to add soon anyway (keyboard showing up in portrait and stuff). Lots of complaints about not supporting flash but we know how that went. Also apparently the headphone jack position was annoying.
What I'm not seeing in the current vision reviews - and maybe it's impossible to see this in real time - is some feature that has the chance to change literally everything that people arent able to comprehend just yet. These reviews being relatively dismissive of this web browsing on your phone thing is absolutely hilarious in hindsight. The only similar thing in the vision is - the passthrough eye thing maybe? Nothing else seems particularly baffling.
I'm glad I read some of those reviews. The vibe I'm getting is - the iPhone was doing something fundamentally weird with this whole smartphone thing that reviewers just didnt get, so they kept reviewing it as an iPod with really bad voice calling and a browser and being confused by all the hype. The vision though? It's a vr/mixed reality headset, we know what those are like, and apple didn't throw any real curveballs.
An addendum - I'm surprised at how spot on so many of these iPhone 1 reviews are outside of the not getting the browser thing (and even there folks complaining about how web2.0 is taking off and there's no js/java/flash support? Good point!). Keyboard should work in portrait mode, voice calling is bad, 3g support is needed, no multimedia messaging. No replaceable battery and not user servicable enough. Camera is OK but needs dramatic improvement. Typing urls is very hard. And of course, no games, no 3rd party apps, no app store. After hearing all these memes for however long about how the media just didn't get the iPhone or something - yeah no they did pretty well
Before the 3g the web browser thing wasn't really that useful. If you have to be on wifi to get reasonable speeds, it's easier to just use your laptop vs a tiny screen with a slow processor.
Yeah (though apparently the wifi support was good idk) and honestly from the reviewers perspective - I think they'd be doing their jobs wrong if they were 'right' about the iphone. What were they supposed to say/forecast? "Oh and while the browser is pretty good, it's obviously incomplete, doesn't support flash, can be hard to read websites, etc. However, this won't be a problem if the iphone ends up catapulting apple to becoming one of the most powerful companies in the world, at which point they'll kill flash. Also while all websites are designed for viewing on desktop screens - that's OK because in the future the iphone is going to be so damn impactful civilizationally that basically the entire human species will start accessing the internet through small mobile computers in their pocket (and start accessing it a lot!) which means that society itself will reshape itself to prioritize making sure websites work on this phone."
Like seriously idk what people want from those reviewers. If they were 'accurately' predicting an outlier product like the iphone I doubt their wild fantasies would be accurately predicting much else
- incredible amounts of hype
- loving the design
- loving the touchscreen and input (directly contrasting folks worrying about the eye tracking now)
- a sense (at least from cnet and pcmag) that it's really just an overgrown iPod so they keep comparing it to an iPod (compared to the vision where folks get that it's a new category for apple and have good comps outside anyway )
There are definitely similarities in terms of complaining about missing features that apple's probably going to add soon anyway (keyboard showing up in portrait and stuff). Lots of complaints about not supporting flash but we know how that went. Also apparently the headphone jack position was annoying.
What I'm not seeing in the current vision reviews - and maybe it's impossible to see this in real time - is some feature that has the chance to change literally everything that people arent able to comprehend just yet. These reviews being relatively dismissive of this web browsing on your phone thing is absolutely hilarious in hindsight. The only similar thing in the vision is - the passthrough eye thing maybe? Nothing else seems particularly baffling.
I'm glad I read some of those reviews. The vibe I'm getting is - the iPhone was doing something fundamentally weird with this whole smartphone thing that reviewers just didnt get, so they kept reviewing it as an iPod with really bad voice calling and a browser and being confused by all the hype. The vision though? It's a vr/mixed reality headset, we know what those are like, and apple didn't throw any real curveballs.