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level comments on The cup-holder paradox - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: PhilGoetz 26 March 2013 04:47AM

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Comment author: level 28 March 2013 03:06:56AM 2 points [-]

Apple didn't do anything that it wouldn't have been easier for a larger more expert cell phone maker (Nokia, Motorola leap to mind) to do.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nokia designed smartphones and tablets well before Apple:

More than seven years before Apple Inc. rolled out the iPhone, the Nokia team showed a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick. In the late 1990s, Nokia secretly developed another alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen—all features today of the hot-selling Apple iPad.

Comment author: mwengler 28 March 2013 03:05:13PM 3 points [-]

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nokia designed smartphones and tablets well before Apple:

Everybody in the cell phone industry designed smartphones well before Apple. I am and was in the industry and we used to sit around wondering "what is the killer app for data" which would make the public do what we knew they must do, flock to smartphones.

Then the iPhone came out and solved the problem. After every major player and many startups had taken their shot at it.