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iPhone X Anyone think we'd have iPhones (in 2018) 20+ years ago?

20 years ago I was 18 and I never even liked phones, I really saw no point in them as pay phones were everywhere. I didn't even want one till a customer got robbed at gun point outside of a dicks sporting goods I worked at, then I got a Motorola V2397 lol. I then remember when the Motorola V60 came out around 2001 and I thought that was the future lol.
 
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MisterSavage said:
Ugh. Remember when mobile phones had separate camera attachments you had to connect to take a photo?
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Considering this was my first camera, a phone with a camera was amazing -

My First Camera.jpg
 
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So many people have commented here, but here's my take:

I've been in computing since 1987 when I was hired by Digital Equipment Corporation as a bench tech. I've used PC's since DOS 3.1, I've had a Mac SE/30 and a single core 700 MHZ PowerPC iBook (loved it!!) and a few Linux boxes, too. Always wanted a Mac, and now I do! I've also used many Nokia flip phones and a Palm Pilot. The black and white screened Palms were wonderful devices, very well designed - though their conduits (sync programs) sucked mightily. I could get 2 weeks of use from 2 AA batteries. Try that now, don't think so.

The Principal Software Engineer at the time I was at Digital was Jeffrey Harrow. He wrote an internal newsletter called "The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" and somehow I was able to subscribe to it. It was really for the C Suite folks at large companies. He spoke of Convergence a lot in the early 2000's. I still have many of those newsletters in EagleFiler.

Edit: changed date in first sentence from 1997 to 1987.
 
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sgtaylor5 said:
So many people have commented here, but here's my take:

I've been in computing since 1997 when I was hired by Digital Equipment Corporation as a bench tech. I've used PC's since DOS 3.1, I've had a Mac SE/30 and a single core 700 MHZ PowerPC iBook (loved it!!) and a few Linux boxes, too. Always wanted a Mac, and now I do! I've also used many Nokia flip phones and a Palm Pilot. The black and white screened Palms were wonderful devices, very well designed - though their conduits (sync programs) sucked mightily. I could get 2 weeks of use from 2 AA batteries. Try that now, don't think so.

The Principal Software Engineer at the time I was at Digital was Jeffrey Harrow. He wrote an internal newsletter called "The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" and somehow I was able to subscribe to it. It was really for the C Suite folks at large companies. He spoke of Convergence a lot in the early 2000's. I still have many of those newsletters in EagleFiler.
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I used DEC PDP 8/E's on a ship back in the early 70's and was Sys Admin for a load of VAX's on a missile program in the 80's - loved DEC equipment and was a card carrying member of DECUS.
 
Ta0jin said:
20 years ago I was 18 and I never even liked phones, I really saw no point in them as pay phones were everywhere. I didn't even want one till a customer got robbed at gun point outside of a dicks sporting goods I worked at, then I got a Motorola V2397 lol. I then remember when the Motorola V60 came out around 2001 and I thought that was the future lol.
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Interesting to read where it provoked you to Purchase a smart phone. I never really had much interest in smart phones until at least 2010 when BlackBerry was fairly popular during that time frame, but the phone that I have the most memories with that I thought was ‘cutting edge’ in design, was the Motorola Razr back in 2002/2003. Incredibly thin, lightweight and the battery life was amazing.
 
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Relentless Power said:
Interesting to read were provoked you to Purchase a smart phone. I never really had much interest in smart phones until at least 2010 when BlackBerry was fairly popular during that time frame, but the phone that I have the most memories with that I thought was ‘cutting edge’ in design, was the Motorola Razr back in 2002/2003. Incredibly thin, lightweight and the battery life was amazing.
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I distinctly remember telling someone that I would never NOT have a clamshell phone because I loved mine so much.

Oh the humanity...
 
The next step is merging our brains with a computer system where we will basically be able to live inside a program.
 
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Relentless Power said:
Interesting to read were provoked you to Purchase a smart phone. I never really had much interest in smart phones until at least 2010 when BlackBerry was fairly popular during that time frame, but the phone that I have the most memories with that I thought was ‘cutting edge’ in design, was the Motorola Razr back in 2002/2003. Incredibly thin, lightweight and the battery life was amazing.
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I loved the razr, those were some good times lol.
 
Kangaroos said:
Hey all,

I was just wondering if any of the older people on the site thought 20 odd years ago if we would have such products that we do now. Did you think touchscreen devices that had camera capabilities could exist?

It's crazy to think how much technology has evolved in only a short amount of time. Most people think technology has come to a stopping point in terms of evolution and only making small improvements (which is true for all phones, not just iPhone). They are just getting faster and better cameras.

My point is, do you think something crazy is going to be invented again like it happened with the release of the original iPhone? Not only for Apple, but with all companies, they are all evolving but doesn't seem like much is apart from the foldable phones. I just wonder in 10 years what flagship phones will be like.

Opinions will be much appreciated!
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Yes, I actually drew what a modern phone is as of today back in 1998 and the square reader!

I think I am owed some royalty who stole my schematics when I was a lucent.
 

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Kangaroos said:
Hey all,

I was just wondering if any of the older people on the site thought 20 odd years ago if we would have such products that we do now. Did you think touchscreen devices that had camera capabilities could exist?

It's crazy to think how much technology has evolved in only a short amount of time. Most people think technology has come to a stopping point in terms of evolution and only making small improvements (which is true for all phones, not just iPhone). They are just getting faster and better cameras.

My point is, do you think something crazy is going to be invented again like it happened with the release of the original iPhone? Not only for Apple, but with all companies, they are all evolving but doesn't seem like much is apart from the foldable phones. I just wonder in 10 years what flagship phones will be like.

Opinions will be much appreciated!
Click to expand...

Smartphones have been around since the mid-90s so yes.

http://archives.cnn.com/1999/TECH/ptech/12/03/qualcomm.pdq/index.html
 
az431 said:
Smartphones have been around since the mid-90s so yes.

http://archives.cnn.com/1999/TECH/ptech/12/03/qualcomm.pdq/index.html
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I am talking about something completely different..

Did you ever think you would have a phone that could take photos, be an mp3 player, watch movies, etc (everything that smartphones do now) 20+ years ago when it wasn't around? You can go to Walmart and buy a $100 phone which would've been mind-boggling to people in the 80's, 90's, and even 00's.
 
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Kangaroos said:
I am talking about something completely different..

Did you ever think you would have a phone that could take photos, be an mp3 player, watch movies, etc (everything that smartphones do now) 20+ years ago when it wasn't around? You can go to Walmart and buy a $100 phone which would've been mind-boggling to people in the 80's, 90's, and even 00's.
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There was a really good image I saw a while back that had all the 80's tech (like a VHS camcorder you put on your shoulder, boom box, etc) that now fits into our phones we put in our pocket. That really hit home for me.
 
20 years ago I was dreaming of the day when I could have ALL my music available to me on some type of storage device that could be played in my car. Can't say it ever crossed my mind that it would be a phone that would do that. I thought it would be whatever followed up the CD. Something to just hold music.

It's not hard to look back and see the path that lead us here. The hard part is looking 20 years into the future.
 
Kangaroos said:
Hey all,

I was just wondering if any of the older people on the site thought 20 odd years ago if we would have such products that we do now. Did you think touchscreen devices that had camera capabilities could exist?

It's crazy to think how much technology has evolved in only a short amount of time. Most people think technology has come to a stopping point in terms of evolution and only making small improvements (which is true for all phones, not just iPhone). They are just getting faster and better cameras.

My point is, do you think something crazy is going to be invented again like it happened with the release of the original iPhone? Not only for Apple, but with all companies, they are all evolving but doesn't seem like much is apart from the foldable phones. I just wonder in 10 years what flagship phones will be like.

Opinions will be much appreciated!
Click to expand...
20 yrs ago I was obsessed with girls (I was in high school) so I had other preoccupation lol.

I must say I guess I’ve been a tech person given I had palm treo, black berry, windows phone. All had horrendous web browsers and unintuitive music interface. The first gen iPhone finally got the package right.
 
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The Japanese did:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/technology/20cell.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_industry_in_Japan

Not that there weren't other companies playing with these ideas (IBM and Ericsson stand out):
https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-cell-phone-design-between-1983-2009/

But Japan was leading adoption.

We assumed that the Palm Pilot and phone would merge at some point, but I'd visit Japan and wonder why the heck anyone would want to take a picture with a phone. But they were using their phones for everything-- email, SMS, pictures, games, subway payments, mini-web pages, TV, radio... I always assumed it was because they wanted to make use of the time spent on subways.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "iPhone". Touch screens and cameras were around or nearly around 20 years ago, just crappier versions of them.

The tech has improved, and some surprises popped up, but for the most part we keep improving on old ideas until they become usable. I expect we'll see the same trend over the next 20 years. Ideas that seem underdeveloped today, will be streamlined and so deeply integrated into our way of life that it'll feel revolutionary even if the ideas themselves date back to the 80's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality
or before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#History
 
Ta0jin said:
Except for lack of picture messaging on the first gen I have to agree lol.
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Man I had several of pda and “smartphones”. And the iPhone blew those away! Having a working browser and iTunes in my pocket was revolutionary. At the time mobile pictures were so bad why bother.
 
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1rottenapple said:
Man I had several of pda and “smartphones”. And the iPhone blew those away! Having a working browser and iTunes in my pocket was revolutionary. At the time mobile pictures were so bad why bother.
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Why not bother? Looking back given what we have now yeah the pics were bad, but at the time the pics were pretty good. I’m not putting the product down cause I still think it was an amazing device at the time but when my friends with basic feature phones could do it, I decided against purchasing gen 1 cause that was a feature I used often.
 
eyoungren said:
20 years ago I wasn't so into technology as I am now, so I never thought about it. 20 years ago we got our first flip phones in order to call each other (my wife and I) and that's all we saw them for.

It was only ten years later after having used my Sanyo Katana for email/internet the first time that I even considered using our phones for more. Text messaging was a huge thing for us, especially my wife.

Honestly, I can see a future where all this technology is integrated into your brain. Everything you see on a screen is put on your eyeballs and you just interact by thought. Of course that's way in the future and all the medical issues (like rejection of tech parts in your head) will have to be worked out. It requires advances in not only phone technology but medical technology.

But to just be able to naturally look at something in AR or VR with no device at all, accept calls and answer texts while scrolling info across your eyes, all controlled and dismissed by thought would be cool.

Not for some of course, probably a nightmare to them. But that's where I ultimately see all this going.

Google Glass is an early shot at it.
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Ghost in the Shell, a great anime film that influenced the Wachoskis to make the Matrix among others, predicted this in 1995.
 
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decafjava said:
Ghost in the Shell, a great anime film that influenced the Wachoskis to make the Matrix among others, predicted this in 1995.
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Side note:

Just want to comment that ‘Ghost in the shell’ remake was Scarlett Johansson a few years back was excellent. For a sci-fi/futuristic movie, it was fairly well executed in terms of the storyline/plot and overall acting with CGI graphics. Highly recommend if you have not watched it yet.
 
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Relentless Power said:
Side note:

Just want to comment that ‘Ghost in the shell’ remake was Scarlett Johansson a few years back was excellent. For a sci-fi/futuristic movie, it was fairly well executed in terms of the storyline/plot and overall acting with CGI graphics. Highly recommend if you have not watched it yet.
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I was contemplating but wasn’t sure as death note let me down but if you say it’s good I’ll give it a look see.
 
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