> To be fair when the iPhone 1 came out nobody really said they need it in their lives vs a Nokia or BB
That's not how I remember it, that original keynote was magical. The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear, the only damper being high price together with tying it to an AT&T contract.
While impressive technologically, this on the other hand gives rather creepy vibes - the whole presentation looks like a Black Mirror episode.
Agreed, I think they may struggle to overcome the whole “Black Mirror” effect. Feedback from my brother and parents (veritable Apple-philes) this morning amounted to “sounds kinda cool but I’d probably think someone was a grade-A weirdo if I showed up at home and saw they had a AR/VR headset / I’d take that $3500 and go on a nice weekend trip, play some golf, have a nice dinner, etc.”
While HN may be more “the target market”, I’m still fairly certain we’re a vanishingly small contingent of consumers, and apparently we’re not even completely onboard with AR/VR ourselves.
>The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear,
I don't remember that at all. Windows phones could do essentially everything the first iPhone could do, and in 3G. What they couldn't do was do it seamlessly and quickly like an iPhone and that made all the difference.
If I remember correctly, weren't most of the original Windows Mobile devices similar to PDAs in that they required a stylus to use them? I joined Microsoft around that time before the iPhone, working in the codec team, so we had several test devices. I just remember how clunky they felt to use. Kind of laggy and the UI was a bit ugly. Windows Phone came out to try to fix that and we got the whole Metro UI thing.
Even as a college student, watching them use that capacitive touch screen vs the clunky resistive screens was magical. I'd owned an iPod for a couple of years and had already seen the smoothness of the clicky wheel thing. Every single person I knew was looking forward to this phone
I asked people that are close to my age at the time about this headset and the reaction is pretty visceral. May be my crowd is more "tech focused" but strapping a headset just elicits a completely negative reaction, especially with those creepy eyes. "Black Mirror" and "RPO" were frequent references, explicitly as negatives
What benefits exactly? Touch screens were not well regarded pre-iPhone, I remember a lot of people not wanting to ditch their keypads. And there was no app store at first so it was just a phone with music which many could already do.
That's not how I remember it, that original keynote was magical. The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear, the only damper being high price together with tying it to an AT&T contract.
While impressive technologically, this on the other hand gives rather creepy vibes - the whole presentation looks like a Black Mirror episode.