Did not the same thing occur prior where most cellphones had terrible menu based systems? If you shake up an industry with a superior interface, and users get comfortable with it, there is no reasonable argument that continuing with an older standard would be a wise business decision.
Sure, you wouldn't want to continue with an older standard at that point, but I don't think that is the argument.
If I've seen one consistent thing from Apple product design, it's that they appear to iterate continuously on the hardware and software/UI/IX components until they feel they have reached the absolute best (and before a wrong-tangent thread starts, that doesn't mean it is THE best, just Apple's opinion of best, etc.)
Most likely in the course of designing the iPhone/iPad, Apple threw away countless hardware and software designs that would have frankly been great and significant game changers. So I would imagine their view is along the lines of "We know the iPhone isn't the only conceivable marketable smartphone layout."
I personally believe that Samsung, or some other smart company, could have come up with an iPhone competitor that would not be so closely compared to and confused with the iPhone. Especially when you consider that the iPhone was groundbreaking in the sense of not having a physical keyboard. That was certainly not perceived as the "perfect" solution at the time, and probably still isn't. There was room for innovative differentiation in how user input was handled (physical keyboard, Palm grafitti-style input, chording keyboard, something new).
Instead Samsung (and several other companies) immediately switched to the flat all-glass iPhone design with the same basic rows of squared icons.
> That was certainly not perceived as the "perfect" solution
> at the time, and probably still isn't. There was room for
> innovative differentiation in how user input was handled
> (physical keyboard, Palm grafitti-style input, chording keyboard, something new).
I understand why this perception exists, but I do not think that it represents a fair assessment of what happened.
The first Android device after the iPhone was the HTC G1, with both a keyboard and a trackball. The first two "high-end" (IMO) Android phones were the Motorola Droid and Nexus One (one had a keyboard, the other had a trackball). There were also some Blackberry-esque designs built in the past couple of years (cf, Motorola Charm, and a couple of others). There have also been variations on hinge design and screen setups (HTC Desire Z hinge, and Kyocera Echo).
Samsung themselves have built a couple of high end Android phones with slideout keyboards for both AT&T and Sprint.
The fact that they've settled on a slate design has less to do with their attempts at differentiation than it does with providing what the market has been asking for. They've tried building the other phones, they just don't sell to as large of a demographic.
I can't imagine anyone today picking Palm graffiti-style input over Swype, for example.
Grafitti was just a throw-away example, I wouldn't have actually banked on that either.
I disagree that the slate is what the "market wanted", it's what Apple told them they wanted, which is a very polished skill of Apple.
Apple consistently sets their marketing apart, and many/most other vendors follow up with "me too" products and marketing. I don't recall seeing any of the keyboard/trackball type phones really truly pushing and standing behing those products as a "THIS is what you want" type of marketing. It's kind of like Apple stakes out a claim and defends it vehemently with their product marketing. Many other vendors try something and kinda say "we think you might want to consider this", but they don't seem to truly own and embrace their own decisions.
Apple basically ignores everything else and puts out their own concepts. I don't see this as much from other companies, though I do try to really look and keep an open mind.
I personally think that an elegantly designed and marketed keyboard phone could have been a solid iPhone rival, maybe even still could.
I had that first Motorola Droid, but the software truly sucked at the time. Email client was lame, didn't support signatures at all. The keyboard was OK, but not great. The OS consistently fumbled switching between soft and physical keyboard by throwing away whatever you were typing. So, I don't think the "market" rejected the early keyboard phones as much as they rejected to overall state of those devices at the time relative to iOS.
True. But it's what you do when faced with this predicament that counts. Compare the approach of Samsung versus Microsoft.
Samsung pretty clearly took the iPhone and decided to make their own equivalent. It's an approach they've used (with great success) when competing with Sony. Unlucky for them Apple patented their work every step of the way.
Microsoft however went back to the drawing board, looked at how users were actually using the iPhone, went through their own product development process and built something unquestionably unique.
This is exactly what I'm trying to say when it comes to the discussing "Samsung had to copy the iPhone cause it is the defacto standard". It is not. Nothing should be a standard. Apple didn't copy Nokia even if Nokia was the defacto standard and the bestelling phone maker. It is not okay to just copy products and earn a fortune with it. I genuinely believe that Apple invested millions of dollars into the UX of the iOS platform and letting people just copy it would be a shame and just the wrong thing.
Why can't Samsung just come up with it's own ideas? Why was there no S-Voice before Siri? Why is the Galaxy line pretty much the only Android Smartphone with a home button? Why do Samsung product packages (!!) look nearly the same as Apple?
Even if people like Samsung or hate Apple they have to admit that something fishy is going on here.
