Friday, September 23, 2011

Thoughts on Apple Device's Innovations

So, there seems a lot of suing around by big companies like Apple, Samsung, etc.


That leads to one to think of innovations, creativities, etc of the device.

Now, while the original Apple iPhone brought us new and highly intuitive handphone usage, a few of its ideas seems to me rather familiar...

Before the introduction of iPhone in 2007, I've been using a long string of Palm Treo handphone models, such as the Palm Treo 600, 650, 680 and Centro. Also not to forget those pre-smartphone PDAs like Palm M-100, T3, T5, TX, Lifedrive which I've owned before.

Here are 3 of the familiar functions that were implemented on the Palm devices before the 2007 iPhone 2G:

1) Ringer Switch
Simple idea, but great usability! This is one feature that is available on all Palm Treo smartphone models.



2) Threaded SMS
This is one feature that brought me to buy those Palm Treos. Even "heavy-weight" smartphones like Windows Mobile did not have threaded SMS back then.




3) Screen Rotation
I first saw a screen rotation feature on the Palm T3 PDA. There was no accelerometer back then though. You need to tap on a button to rotate the screen to landscape and vice versa. Following that, this feature starts appearing on Windows Mobile phones.
Now, that is innovation!



Sadly, due to extremely poor marketing of Palm Inc, Palm declined.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad -

2 comments:

  1. palm's decline not due to poor marketing. Apple proved that you need 0 dollars marketing dollars to be listed in press.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're right. It's more than poor marketing that brought Palm down.

    ReplyDelete