what to do with old KT gear

[Andy Peters]

> why does every smartphone user interface look like the iPhone's?

Not quite.

My Android, first time I put USB to a PC, I could see "all" files. Like that for a year. Then I did a major little video project. When I plugged-in to get the videos, now I *only* saw camera files!! What changed?? I did get the videos off, but it bugged me. Turns out there is a well documented change in Android and you go to Settings to make a choice: Charge,  MTP, or PTP. But there is no such option in my Android! So one day when I was peeved-off about something else, I fiddled a while. On mine, *right* after you plug the USB, there are nearly invisible icons in the status bar. They may be USB symbols-- too tiny to be sure. I poked, got lucky, and got my MTP back.

And Apple iPhone does it different since they have their own i-Pod derived protocol.

You miss the larger point.  Before the iPhone, you had several styles of phone hardware. You had Nokia and Motorola phones. You had Blackberry and Palm Treo smartphones. You had the Palm stylus and you had the Blackberry keyboard and little mouse ball thing. And on the software side, you had different operating systems, Blackberry and Symbian and Palm and others, all of which worked very differently.

iPhone comes out, and suddenly all phones are flat blocks with a glass touchscreen face and minimal physical buttons. The user interface went from whatever was the default on the other OSes to the iOS style of square icons in a grid and everything else.  That shift was palpable. The other vendors saw the future, and it wasn't a keypad and it wasn't a stylus, and they knew they had to be like Apple or get left behind.

Sure, eventually the look and feel of Android (which killed off Symbian and the others) diverged somewhat from iOS, but if iOS didn't look like it did, Google would not  have made their phone OS look the way it did. If anyone was honest, they'd admit that the Microsoft Windows Phone operating system had a User interface that differed enough from iOS to be a real alternative, but that difference got lost when Google gave away their work to the Asian companies who wanted to play in the smartphone game. Those phone vendors were quite happy to use the free Android to provide wanna-be phones whose only competitive point against Apple was the price. And here in the states, the only two Android providers still in business are Samsung and LG.  Who remembers HTC and the others?

So yeah: my LG apes the iPhone shape and curves and much of the graphical interface. But the places you shove a screwdriver, to get stuff to work, changes on a whim. (DR Trimmer kept their literal screwdriver-hole in the same place for 15 years.)

And while Apple is regularly excoriated for changing things for no reason, they're nowhere near as bad as Android, where the interface is never consistent. And worse for the Android users: for some reason, the phone vendors make upgrading to the latest version of the OS. Apple has been generally excellent about supporting older models in the latest version of iOS.

Yeah, I'm a fanboy, but the Apple products work.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Let's be honest here -- remember what cell phones looked like before the first iPhone was introduced?

And notice what they all look like now?

I do. I wished my Galaxy and Huawey were as convenient as my earlier clamshell. Swiping the touch-screen for answering calls is a failure 9 times out of 10, I don't know why, I'm probably not educated enough to swipe correctly. I never had problems answering with the flip phone, it was always ready, no need for a password. But everybody's been convinced that a cellphone must look like a glorified ceramic tile, thinner and thinner to the point of absurdity (Galaxy Note 7). I have a grudge against Apple and their cult followers, because they have convinced the world that their technical and cosmetic options are the only valid ones, when they're only a fad, very well supported by an invasive marketing department.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I may be one of the very few here without a smartphone.  I hear that the next generation Iphone will be $1,000 just for a phone : , and the technology evolution is that people won't make even "phone" calls in the future....They may need to name it something other than phone?  Apple has done well at skimming the cream off the top of the "high touch" market... (a lot of cream).

They are rarely first, but often best.

Sorry I do not have my text number to give you...  8)

JR

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I hear that the next generation Iphone will be $1,000 just for a phone :

For the next generation of humans, that will be the cost of a carwash...

 

[JohnRoberts]

For the next generation of humans, that will be the cost of a carwash...

but the next generation will not own cars....  :

JR

 

[Andy Peters]

. I have a grudge against Apple and their cult followers, because they have convinced the world that their technical and cosmetic options are the only valid ones, when they're only a fad, very well supported by an invasive marketing department.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of Apple users are not members of a cult. I find the products work as advertised, and so do my friends who own them. Others find that Androids work well for them, and many people find that Windows computers work fine, too.

And by definition, a fad is a short-term phenomenon; the iPhone and iOS have been strong for ten years, so it's on beyond fad at this point.

Again, though, I must point out: if Apple's technical and cosmetic choices are the only valid ones, then why did the other smartphone vendors, and the other smartphone OS vendor, veer so suddenly to ape Apple's choices after the iPhone was released? if they felt so strongly that their OS and hardware were superior, why cede the look and feel?

For all of the complaining that Apple has lost its leadership in design and that they have no innovative products in the pipeline and as such are ripe for a fall, why haven't Samsung and Google and Amazon come up with compelling Apple-killing products?

If you want to talk cult, look to Linux.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Samsung's new phone  (8?) was projected to win some market share before they had their battery meltdown and recalled them.

Apple has a very enthusiastic following willing to pay premium prices for premium product.

I do not own a smartphone so don't really have an opinion.  Apple is in an IP fight at the moment with samsung, qualcomm, and several companies we wouldn't recognize the names of, but this is par for the course with Apple  (they play hardball about IP). That said apple doesn't even own the trademark for "IPHONE" in china (yet).

I am posting this on a MAC (mini) and find some of their practices irritating, but no less so than mr softy. 

Computers suck, and smart phones are just little computers so they suck too.

JR

 

[bluebird]

Computers suck, and smart phones are just little computers so they suck too.

Ha! Really its people that suck. I actually think that computers might be the evolution of humans in its infancy. All the latest Sci-fi robot movies sure gets me thinkin'

 

[cyrano]

I do not own a smartphone so don't really have an opinion.  Apple is in an IP fight at the moment with samsung, qualcomm, and several companies we wouldn't recognize the names of, but this is par for the course with Apple  (they play hardball about IP). That said apple doesn't even own the trademark for "IPHONE" in china (yet).

JR

In the case of Qualcomm, it was a bit overstepping it's ip, I think. They wanted licenses paid for every device, even if it didn't have QC chips in it.

I'm a bit miffed at QC, for the same reason I don't like Harman. QC had a very large hole in their BT and Wifi chipsets. A patch is out, but it still shows the same extremely sloppy programming from 10 years ago, when they had a very similar problem.

Anyhow, I don't mind these companies that sit on top of a mountain of cash stripping each other a bit.